China Tech News reports that TD-SCDMA networks will be rolled out by October of 2007. Does this mean the Ministry of Information Infrastructure (MII) is living up to its pledge to roll out TD-SCDMA, China's homegrown 3G telephony standard, by the Olympics?

Well, kind of...

The brief article makes clear the limited scope of the deployment:

The eight cities [selected for the networks] are Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Tianjin, Qinhuangdao, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Xiamen.

China Mobile plans to build 8602 TD outdoor base stations and 3,772 set indoor distribution systems in these eight cities before October this year, of which 2,059 outdoor base stations and 1,015 indoor distribution systems will be built in Beijing. Upon completion, the network will cover the inner area of the Fifth Ring Road and may be extended to the outside of the Fifth Ring Road by 1-5km, covering a total of 900 sq km.

Sorry, Chongqing. Maybe later.

So it will work if you are inside Beijing's Fifth Ring Road. Maybe. TD-SCDMA is rumored to have crappy coverage from any given base station, so only a true 3G optimist would expect the kind of seamless coverage that China's GSM users have become accustomed to. Factor in the widespread suspicion that China Mobile is rolling out TD-SCDMA more or less at regulatory gunpoint and one has to wonder about the quality of the coverage.

Even if the municipal coverage is good, the network will collapse outside of the metropolitan areas of the lucky cities. With Chinese users expecting to be able to talk from highways, trains, mountaintops, grandma's village and wherever else they may be, it's pretty clear that these will be little more than glorified test networks for the time being. Only the hardest of the hardcore will want to shell out for an expensive handset for the TD-SCDMA experience in just a few locations. And that's assuming there are even any interesting services live (see above about China Mobile and gunpoint).

Demonstration networks is how MII and China Mobile (if they are really onboard with this plan) will have to position these installations if they don't expectations to be ruthlessly crushed. A bad start will make the nationwide prospects for TD-SCDMA that much dimmer, and delight the supporters of the more globally established WCDMA standard.

As for me, I just bought a new GSM handset and I'm not planning to upgrade again anytime soon. I guess age and cynicism have killed off my early adopter tendencies.

Update: As was pointed out by a commenter on my other site, the 3G licenses haven't been awarded yet, so by definition any networks are still for trial and demonstration.

The idea, of course, is that a trial network of some scale can be rolled into a commercial deployment. Also, there is little suspense about the fact that China Mobile will get a TD license. They'll get it whether they want it or not.