In the first of a new series of guest columns by prominent leaders in the Chinese technology, media and telecom industries, Hou Ziqiang shares his experience of participating in the commercial trial of China's homegrown 3G standard, TD-SCDMA. Hou is the chief technology adviser and an independent non-executive director of China Netcom Group Corp. (Hong Kong) Ltd. and a senior researcher at the Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Translated from the original Chinese by Iris Hong.

After receiving a TD-SCDMA mobile phone, the U980, from ZTE Corp., I purchased a USIM card, signed a contract and became a user of China Mobile's commercial trial services. While using the services, I thought of the comments made by Li Shihe (editor's note: Li Shihe is the former chief scientist of Datang Mobile Communications Equipment Co. Ltd. and is often referred to as the "father of TD-SCDMA"), recently widely circulated over the Internet, about TD-SCDMA "being put to sleep." Some other people said that China Mobile is "putting TD-SCDMA in a cage."

I think several problems do exist in China Mobile's current promotion of TD-SCDMA services.

First, TD-SCDMA mobile phones require a special USIM card and users cannot keep their numbers when switching to TD-SCDMA. This hurts the promotion of TD-SCDMA services. Users have to use [TD-SCDMA/GSM] dual-mode dual standby mobile phones if they want to keep using their old numbers. (Editor's note: this type of phone has two USIM-card slots and can hold two cards.) The U980 is a dual-mode dual standby phone. The problem with this phone is that it is very large in size and consumes power quickly. Therefore, it is not popular with the consumers. If people could keep their numbers without needing a special USIM card, 2G subscribers could become TD-SCDMA subscribers simply by purchasing a dual-mode phone.

Second, China Mobile's current fee schemes stop users from using a lot of data services and experimenting with mobile Internet services. These services will be key 3G applications in the future. Currently, China Mobile is offering three TD-SCDMA packages that cost RMB 28 ($4.1), RMB 58 ($8.4) and RMB 88 ($12.8) per month respectively. Subscribers have 50 percent off their TD-SCDMA telecom fees during the commercial trials.

China Mobile's voice service fees are quite attractive. However, its monthly data cap is just 10 Megabytes (MB), with a charge of RMB 0.20 ($0.03) per minute for additional data use. This is almost as expensive as Wi-Fi services. Consumers can hardly accept this. As a comparison, Beijing Mobile's GoTone service provides a 50 MB monthly GPRS/EDGE data cap for RMB 20 ($2.9) or 2 Gigabytes (GB) for RMB 200 ($29.1), while users of GPRS/EDGE data cards pay RMB 90 ($13.1) for a 2-GB monthly data cap. This is far less expensive than TD-SCDMA data services. If TD-SCDMA does not provide an appreciably higher data speed, consumers will be unwilling to switch to TD-SCDMA.

According to my experience, the speeds of WAP browsing are almost the same under TD-SCDMA and GPRS modes. Therefore, in order to save power, I often switch off the TD-SCDMA mode on my dual-mode dual standby phone.

In this TD-SCDMA trial, China Mobile provides a video call service that costs RMB 0.6 ($0.09) per minute. However, very few people use this service frequently. It is not very attractive.

From June 1, China Mobile began to offer free credit to consumers who deposit a certain minimum amount in their accounts. However, this does not lower data service fees significantly.

The third problem is that the TD-SCDMA network coverage is much worse than that of GSM. There are still many dead spots, especially inside office buildings.

Fourth, most mobile data applications require the download of client-based software, and run according to a client-server model. There are many versions of software for different mobile phone operating systems. Most client-based software support mainstream mobile phone models that are used by large numbers of users. Very few TD-SCDMA mobile phone models are supported. This restricts the use of applications on TD-SCDMA mobile phones.

In the commercial trial, China Mobile has not been strongly promoting TD-SCDMA services. According to a report by San Dian consulting firm, only 3,000 TD-SCDMA mobile phones were sold within two months of the TD-SCDMA phone number release. China Mobile's sales staff have no sales target or pressure to sell services. When I went to the TD-SCDMA counter at a China Mobile service center, I saw no other customer. The commercial trial is not just for detecting technical problems but also for measuring market reaction, and it seems that the market is indifferent to TD-SCDMA. This is very bad.

However, it seems China Mobile is not worried. That's why there are opinions that TD-SCDMA is "being euthanized" or "put in a cage." From a technical point of view, problems cannot be detected if there are not large numbers of concurrent users online generating large volumes of traffic.

At the 2008 TD-SCDMA Evolution and LTE Summit held on June 2, officials from the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Informatization and the Ministry of Science and Technology all said that TD-SCDMA is, overall, proceeding smoothly. They reiterated that they would continue to support the development of TD-SCDMA and called for the acceleration of TD-SCDMA commercialization. Our leaders were more concerned about technical issues. They were very optimistic. I don't know if they know about the actual situation of the TD-SCDMA commercial trial. The market is ruthless. I hope that TD-SCDMA will not be subjected to a mercy killing!

Source:INTERFAX-CHINA