China Finally Issues 3G Licenses
from the not-sure-we-really-believe-this,-but-oh-well... dept
Chinese authorities have apparently finally issued licenses for mobile operators there to operate 3G networks, following years of delays. The country had been talking about getting 3G going since 2003 or so, but its tech protectionist bent saw it forced to take delay after delay until it could finally get its homegrown TD-SCDMA standard into acceptable working condition, while 3G networks built on existing, widely accepted industry standards flowered elsewhere in the world. It's great that China's offered up an alternative to the WCDMA and CDMA2000 standards, and one that might not carry some of the same intellectual property burdens as those two, translating into lower costs. But by this point, any such benefit the standard might offer has been rendered fairly meaningless by the long delay in getting it to market -- meaning China's protectionism will probably have done more to hurt the country's position in technology than to help it.
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Re:
I think you missed the point. China hadn't even issued the licenses to offer 3G. That's *way* behind. The complaint isn't that they don't yet have 3G, but that they so dragged their feet in even letting such a network be set up.
As for the US... that's an odd statement. It actually has pretty decent 3G coverage, and was significantly ahead of many other countries.
And, when you say that other countries are working on 4G while the US is behind, perhaps you haven't noticed that the US carriers are all launching 4G solutions, and Sprint has already started rolling it out.
Details.
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