China's MII (Ministry of Information Industry) has recently indicated that the long-awaited 3G licenses will be issued in 2005, a move that serves to alleviate speculation about the government's timetable for 3G services. The statement also came at a time when the Chinese government allocated 3G mobile phone number prefixes. 

 

The competition for 3G licenses has been intense. Other than four local telecommunications companies -- China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom, and China Netcom -- Japanese handset vendors and NTT DoCoMo also hope to have a slice of the potential market with its WCDMA (Wideband Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) services. 

 

The Chinese government had been cautious in pinpointing a time-table for 3G license issuance, thus resulting in speculation that it was attempting to gain more time for the home-grown TD-CDMA (Time Division CDMA) standard. The other two systems being considered involve WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) and CDMA2000 technologies. 

 

In November 2004, China conducted trial tests on the three standards and concluded that WCDMA and CDMA200 technologies were nearly ready for commercial launch, while the TD-SCDMA standard had also made significant progress.

 

Additionally, the MII also said the Chinese market is expected to add 58 million connections to its mobile phone subscriber base throughout 2005.