Mei Guan Xi（没关系）

China is finally getting 3G！

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that “3G is just around the corner”

Last week, the gov’t finally gave out 3G licenses! As opposed to the US where carriers bid on spectrum, it’s doled out to the state-owned carriers.

There are probably a million reasons as to why the holdup, but first and foremost is the desire to develop a homegrown system - TS-WCDMA used by the almost monopoly carrier, China Mobile.

China Mobile (>450M users) - TS-SCDMA
China Unicom (~100M users)- WCDMA
China Telecom (previously fixed-line operator only) - CDMA 2000

With the issuance of these licenses, the gov’t also seeks to shake up the playing field a bit since up until now, whatever China Mobile says goes. I am a little skeptical since once an operator has established dominance, all the supporting infrastructure serves to perpetuate the advantage (retail service centers, stores carrying recharge cards, etc).

Of course, with state-owned enterprises anything can happen, since they don’t exactly play by ‘normal’ market rules.