11th November 2004 - Alcatel and Datang Mobile jointly
announced today that they have entered into a partnership
agreement to foster the introduction of TD-SCDMA in
China. The agreement was signed through Alcatel Shanghai
Bell, Alcatel's flagship Chinese company, today in
Beijing, China, in the presence of Mr. Xi Guohua,
Vice Minister of Information Industry in China. This
co-operative effort is the first of its kind in the
TD-SCDMA sector among the TD-SCDMA Alliance members.
According to the agreement, Alcatel will invest EURO
25 million in Datang Mobile, including share holding,
product planning, system integration and manufacturing.
Alcatel will support the research and development
of TD-SCDMA and become the privileged partner of Datang
Mobile for industrialization of TD-SCDMA products
in China.
Leveraging Alcatel's expertise and advanced technology
for large-scale manufacturing, Alcatel and Datang
Mobile will together form a dedicated team to focus
on the industrialization of TD-SCDMA products from
Alcatel's manufacturing base in Shanghai. Thanks to
this joint effort, the first TD-SCDMA products are
expected to be delivered to the Chinese market by
June 2005.
The partnership will also put both companies in a
unique position to lead the TD-SCDMA market and achieve
growth on this market as soon as the commercial deployment
of 3G starts in China. According to the agreement,
Datang Mobile will adopt Alcatel's core system and
applications for TD-SCDMA solution.
According to XJ Wang, Senior Analyst, Yankee Group:
"The new partnership agreement between Alcatel and
Datang is a great news to the TD-SCDMA family. There
could not be a better time for Alcatel to enter the
TD-SCDMA development. Considering most of the TD-SCDMA
deployments will be greenfield opportunities, winning
TD-SCDMA contracts will certainly boost Alcatel's
market share in the infrastructure business segment."
Zhou Huan, Chairman and President of Datang Telecommunication
Group, said, "Today marks a significant milestone
in China's 3G development. As a pioneer of TD-SCDMA
technology, we share the responsibility of bringing
this technology to the market. With Alcatel's expertise
and experience, I am confident that we will be able
to shorten the time-to-market of the TD-SCDMA products."
"We are proud of playing a part in fostering the
development of China's home-grown 3G standards, "remarked
Gérard Dega, President of Alcatel Shanghai Bell. "With
a strong partner like Datang Mobile, we will be able
to offer Alcatel's customers a complete range of 3G
mobile infrastructure solutions, regardless of the
standard they adopt. The partnership will also complement
our global experience in 3G to further strengthen
our market position in China."
In addition to the partnership with Datang, Alcatel
has recently commenced TD-SCDMA interoperability testing
with China's Ministry of Information Industry, a development
that evidences the depth of Alcatel's support for
the TD-SCDMA standard.
Alcatel's user-centric broadband vision encompasses
a full range of solutions to enable operators to deliver
ubiquitous and easy broadband access to end-users.
As an essential component of this vision, Alcatel's
agreement with Datang Mobile on TD-SCDMA aims at benefiting
the Chinese 3G mobile operators and end-users at large.
About TD-SCDMA TD-SCDMA is one of three 3G standards
licensed by International Telecommunication Union
in the year of 2000. The other two are W-CDMA and
CDMA 2000.
About Datang Mobile
Datang Telecom Technology Co., Ltd. is a large-scale
science and technology enterprise that is engaged
in the development of leading information communication
equipment and systems such as high-capacity digital
switching optical networking, mobile communications,
data communication series, digital microwave communication
series, software and system integration series. Datang
was founded through investment capital contributed
by the MPT's China Academy of Te1ecommunications Technology
(CATT) and twelve enterprise investors.
