Vendors officially launch $100M partnership aimed at TD-SCDMA market UPDATED 03/29

March 21, 2005

2 Min Read
Huawei, Siemens Push 3G Deal

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Siemens AG (NYSE: SI; Frankfurt: SIE) have officially launched their $100 million partnership deal aimed at the Time-Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) network infrastructure market in China, a joint venture initially outlined in February 2004 (see Siemens, Huawei Sign JV ).

The new business -- dubbed TD Tech Ltd. -- will be headquartered in Beijing. German vendor Siemens will control a majority 51 percent of the company, with Huawei owning the remaining 49 percent.

"There will be more than 400 employees working at the company," writes a Huawei spokesman in an email note to Unstrung.Speaking at a news conference in Beijing, Peter Weiss, executive vice president of Siemens China, said the joint venture’s first commercial network products are expected to be launched “before the end of the year.”

Developed by the Chinese Academy of Telecommunications Technology, TD-SCDMA has been approved by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and combines older Time-Division Multiple Access (TDMA) with Time-Division Duplexing (TDD) techniques of broadcasting over a single chunk of spectrum, rather than the normal two bands (see TD-SCDMA Forum Joins 3GPP).

The Chinese government has been eagerly touting the benefits of TD-SCDMA, and the technology is tipped to feature in the award of 3G licenses, due later this year. The established European standard, Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA), is also expected to be deployed by at least one national carrier (see China Preps for TD-SCDMA).

Siemens is not the only Western network vendor attempting to grab a slice of the TD-SCDMA pie. In January Nortel Networks Ltd. (NYSE/Toronto: NT) teamed with China Putian, whilst Alcatel (NYSE: ALA; Paris: CGEP:PA) has announced a similar deal with Datang Telecom Technology Co. Ltd. (see Nortel Teams on Chinese 3G and Alcatel Tangos With Datang).

— Justin Springham, Senior Editor, Europe, Unstrung

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