The three new telecom providers are apparently going to be assigned a technology, rather than competing for them in an open spectrum bidding process such as seen in the US. So it’s actually going to be very interesting to see how this mobile standards marketing experiment works out.

At this point, 3G license issuances are not firm, only conditional if/when the mergers are successfully implemented. This could give China Mobile an early lead since it already has authorization to implement TD-SCDMA now in test markets (originally it was planned to roll it out in a big way for the Olympics in Beijing but this seems unlikely now with just two months to go).

Whenever the new licenses are issued, technology convergence is probably not going to happen in the 3G space anytime soon in China since it seems clear that China is no longer going to push TD-SCDMA (its homegrown technolgy) as the exclusive platform. So open competition could take some time to sort out the winners and losers.

Long-term, China Mobile’s lead is going to be hard to overcome, but my bet is on China Unicom’s W-CDMA service to win over a large piece of the consumer market. Unicom has a brand name, Yao Ming as a spokesperson, and W-CDMA is used by Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, the company that brought the world “my fake artificial-intelligence girlfriend”-type of Tamagotchi’esque social applications. For 3G, DoCoMo offers the FOMA service on this platform which offers neat features such as mobile video-conferencing and high-speed multimedia downloading. I believe social applications like these will be popular with a Chinese user base, and the existing software and phones from Japan (which are actually the most advanced in the world, but mostly unusable outside of the country) will be easily ported to the Chinese market by Nokia, Sony/Ericcson etc.

Jason

TD-SCDMA, CDMA, Wimax…I guess each of the “Big Three” has its own motivations for adopting a different telecom standard going forward. From the consumer’s perspective, it’d certainly be simpler to simply have one standard. I know it’s tough to switch from a Sprint to a Verizon back in the U.S., but consumers are at least aware of their options and can take their business elsewhere. In China, I don’t think the majority of the population even considers it.

I wonder if there are any comparisons that can be drawn from the evolution of other countries’ mobile standards that could suggest whether technology convergence will inevitably happen in China.

Your thoughts?

That said, I always find it odd that when it comes to free market principles, the US is the first to claim that is what every other market needs while zealously protecting its own. Case in point: Huawei Technologies (together with Bain Capital Partners) several months back tried to purchase 3Com, a US networking technology firm, but had to withdraw the offer because it was clear it would be turned down by the US government’s oversight committee. Not exactly a fair and open market.

The American top leadership (Bush, the Senate, etc) is especially skilled at what I call the ‘free-market soundbite’ but slow on the substance.