China tests cell technology

hina Mobile Communications Corp (中國移動通信), the world's No. 1 cell-phone company by users, transmitted the first call using made-in-China technology that could take sales from Ericsson AB, Qualcomm Inc and other suppliers.

A high-speed network set up in the southwest city of Chongqing using a system developed by Datang Mobile Communications Equipment Ltd (大唐移動通信設備) and Siemens AG proved able to carry voice calls, said Datang spokesman Yang Hua.

The standard, known as time-division synchronous code- division multiple access, could pose a challenge to Qualcomm, whose technology is used by China Mobile's rival.

Its adoption could also affect sales of Ericsson, Motorola Inc. and other companies that share annual equipment orders of about $3 billion in China, the world's largest wireless market.

China Mobile's participation has fueled speculation that China will press its biggest operator to use TD-SCDMA, whose developers say it's cheaper and more efficient than alternatives.

``The tests are baby steps,'' said Allen Chen, a consultant at Norson Telecom Consulting in Beijing. ``What's interesting is China Mobile's involvement in the trials.''

China Railway Communication Co (中國鐵通), a phone company run by the railway ministry, is carrying out similar trials in Chengdu, 320km from Chongqing.

State-backed Datang and Germany's Siemens spent more than two years developing the standard, which sends and receives cell-phone signals simultaneously.

That allows three times more voice and data content to be fit onto a given wireless spectrum than global system for mobile communications, or GSM, China's dominant mobile standard.

Local control of manufacturing and licensing may make the technology a cheaper option for China.

China has 212 million mobile-phone users, of whom 140 million are China Mobile subscribers using GSM. Rival China United Telecommunications Corp (中國聯通) uses both GSM and, in a network set up in 2001, Qualcomm's code-division multiple access, or CDMA, standard.

China Mobile's involvement in the Datang trials suggests it may choose more than one technology as it upgrades its network to offer video-conferencing and other high-speed services.

The company could upgrade a fifth of its network using the Datang-Siemens technology and the rest using wideband-CDMA, the high- speed version of GSM, Norson's Chen said.

The network test caught investors by surprise.