The Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (MII) announced Friday that it has set home-grown TD-SCDMA as national technology standard for the telecommunication industry.

The technology is already mature and ready for manufacturers to move ahead with production, said the ministry. The announcement means that China's home-grown standard for the third-generation mobile communication (3G) would get official support.

China had implemented a series of tests on TD-SCDMA since 2001. The result shows that the key technologies for TD-SCDMA have all been realized in equipment and terminals based on TD-SCDMA could support most of the functions expected on 3G, the ministry said.

A stand-alone network for TD-SCDMA will be built for the homegrown technology, it said.

With the participation of concerned companies and research institutions, China has made a set of sub-standards for TD-SCDMA. In order to further regulate system and equipment based on TD-SCDMA, the MII decided to release it as the national standard, said the ministry. Companies engaged in TD-SCDMA are hopefully to develop the technology under the guide of the series of standards and a more mature environment would be formed for the industry, said the ministry.

Born several years later than the other two international standards for 3G, namely WCDMA and CDMA2000, China's home-grown standard encountered great difficulties on its way of development.

Major companies proposing the standard have been striving for government support in a bid to give TD-SCDMA a seat in China's booming mobile communication industry.

A senior official with the MII had made it clear last month that TD-SCDMA would have a place in China's 3G and would be run by a competent telecom operator.

(Xinhua News Agency January 21, 2006)