The third-generation mobile phone services (3G) based on China's homegrown TD-SCDMA standard finally entered commercial trials in eight cities starting April 1.

China Mobile Communications Corp., the parent company of Hong Kong-listed China Mobile Ltd., launched the trial services in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Qinhuangdao.

For its first batch of users, China Mobile invited 20,000 representative customers from different industries and backgrounds to participate in the testing of TD-SCDMA handsets, networks and services. The company provides these customers with data cards and handsets priced between 2,000 and 4,000 yuan ($286-571) free of charge, and 800 yuan ($114) per month in service fee rebates. They also sell TD-SCDMA handsets and launch several service packages for walk-in customers, in the hope of winning more users.

Complaint

In spite of all these efforts, recent on-the-spot interviews by Beijing Review at several service outlets in Beijing found customers complaining. Their feedback exposed a lot of problems with the 3G networks.

A selling point of the services is mobile TV, which is said to allow users to watch the Beijing Olympic Games via the TD-SCDMA handsets in a few months. But some customers failed to receive any signal on many of the handsets at one outlet in Zhongguancun in Haidian District. Zhang Guoguang, one salesman there, said the classical 3G services including mobile TV and video conference had not been introduced for the time being due to the unstable network performance.

"Even if the 3G networks get stable," Zhang said hesitantly, "I wouldn't advise any friend to buy a TD-SCDMA handset right now."

For a majority of buyers, the biggest attraction of a TD-SCDMA handset is the real-time video calling services. Some customers found the 3G networks under test caused the signal and the screen display to dither, blur or be interrupted. Besides, video calling is only possible when both sides have a TD-SCDMA handset.

Wang Xin, a college student in Beijing, bought two handsets, envisioning he will soon see his girlfriend every time he makes a call to her.

"None of my friends has such a handset," Wang explained. "It will only function as a decoration if I didn't buy two at one time."

During the trial period, every customer is allowed a maximum free data flow of 10 megabytes per month and will be charged on the overflowed services. That means there is no charge on the first three MP3 downloads, or 10 visits to an Internet portal, a far cry from supporting the powerful capacity of 3G networks.

"The restriction on data flow is largely because the imperfect 3G networks at present cannot support large quantities of customers to enjoy Internet-related services," said Zhang.

Despite all these defects, one improvement of the TD-SCDMA handsets over the second-generation (2G) handsets is that it allows the user to surf the Internet much faster. Its average download speed is 130 kbps, while that for a general packet radio service (GPRS) mobile phone is approximately 50 kbps.

The current performance of TD-SCMDA networks is far from matching what most Chinese customers have envisioned for almost eight years. In a recent announcement, the TD-SCDMA industry alliance said they hoped the users would understand problems are inevitable during the commercial trials and report problems they identified to operators or handset producers in time to help the industry and the market mature.

Immature market

"The 3G market in China, either in terms of the network operators or the customers, is not ready to host the 3G feast," said Qian Liang, associate professor of electronic engineering with the Shanghai Jiaotong University, to Oriental Morning Post.

Qian thought the TD-SCDMA networks have to be improved in many aspects. "The homegrown TD-SCDMA standard is not a mainstream 3G standard," said Qian. "The mainstream is WCDMA and CDMA2000, which account for 80 percent of the market, while TD-SCDMA takes up around 15 percent.