A South China Morning Post report today cites Qualcomm’s president for Greater China, Frank Meng Pu, as commenting that the country should issue 3G mobile licenses based on the principle of technology neutrality to end the year-long head start for homegrown standard TD-SCDMA. “The government should open the market,” he is reported as stating. “Operators know how to drive the technology under market competition.” Meng added that the Chinese 3G standard would actually benefit from this move. “The technology will improve when it competes with others. Just like the competition between CDMA and GSM is driving the improvement of these two technologies.”

China Mobile – the world’s largest operator by subscribers – is currently trialling TD-SCDMA services in 10 cities, and has said it will increase this to 38 by the end of next-June. China Mobile is expected to be granted a commercial nationwide TD-SCDMA license once the country’s industry restructuring is complete, whilst China Telecom and China Unicom will likely receive 3G licenses based on globally deployed CDMA2000 and WCDMA technologies, respectively. With over 400 million subscribers, development of the Chinese market is of huge importance to chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm.