China's wireless LAN standard WAPI takes center stage once again six months after Chinese telecom regulators kicked off the trial service of TD- SCDMA, one of the three international 3G standards.
Big telecom operators such as China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom all say that their WiFi hot spots will be finally working for WAPI. Even the chips to be launched by Intel will also be compatible with WAPI.

China Mobile and China Telecom require affirmatively in their bidding documents that all wireless access equipment, wireless routers, and wireless network bridges should be compatible with WAPI.

Huang Guanghui, secretary-general of the Guangdong 3G Industry Development League, says that China's wireless urban network blueprint has been drawn up, which integrates WAPI, WLAN and 3G into one.

So far some telecom equipment suppliers have shipped some WAPI-enabled WLAN network equipment to the two telecom carriers. And the suppliers say that they will upgrade all of their equipment to be compatible with WAPI.

On September 24, the first WAPI demonstrative network was kicked off in Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), which was jointly built up by BUPT, the design institute under China Mobile, State Radio Monitoring Centre, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

On July 16, the WAPI Industry League unveiled the first WAPI/GSM dual-mode mobile phone and formed the WAPI mobile terminal testing working group at the same time.

During the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games, China Mobile set up some 2,400 wireless hot spots in 40 gymnasiums and stadiums in six Olympic cities.

The Guangdong provincial government is brewing a province- wide wireless LAN by adopting WAPI-enabled telecom equipment.

Latest report released by the WAPI Industry League shows that five cities are building up their WLANs, they are Beijing, Shanghai, Yanzhou, Hangzhou, and Xiamen. And more than 20 cities are intended to set up their WLANs, including Tianjin, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, and so on.

China Telecom has made much headway in WLAN construction in Southern China. It sets its goal of building up 25,000 hot spots there by the end of 2008. In Shanghai, the telecom carrier has had 3,000 hot spots, and 1,400 in Guangdong.

In comparison with WiFi, development of WAPI has lagged behind. Newest figures from In-Stat indicate that 294 million consumer electronics were equipped with WiFi chips by the end of 2007. And by 2011, the number of dual-mode mobile phones featured with WiFi function will outpace that of PCs.

Source:SinoCast