News
3G investment boost for China and India
Stuart O'Brien Jan 7 2009, 4:02pm
Market watcher Ovum says license awards will be a boon to both countries.
China and India will benefit from increased investment from overseas following the issuing of 3G licenses this month.
Last week the Chinese regulator officially granted 3G licences to its three operators, while India says it will auction its spectrum by the end of January.
Oven says each market has different foreign direct investment (FDI) rules, however, so the 3G opportunity varies also.
For example, India limits FDI in its telecoms industry to 74 per cent and permits foreign operators to bid for its 3G licences.
Ovum analyst Charice Wang said: "We expect that this will attract many international carriers to bid. In contrast, China’s FDI level is only 49 per cent and it has not made any 3G licences available to foreign players.
"Nonetheless, vendors will welcome the news in both markets.
It is a golden opportunity for global equipment and handset vendors at a time when there are few signs of growth."
Ovum also says debate over the merits of China's TD-SCDMA standard compared to the WCDMA and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technologies used elsewhere is redundant.
Wang added: "We don’t believe this is much of an advantage for China Telecom and China Unicom. Firstly, China is a huge market and is certainly a big enough market for TD-SCDMA to thrive.
"Secondly, let’s remember that China Mobile controls around 70 per cent of China’s mobile market and this will not drastically change in the short term.
"Thirdly, TD-SCDMA is China’s home-grown 3G technology, so it has immense government backing. Therefore we believe that it is not a matter of ‘if’ TD-SCDMA will succeed, but a matter of when."
