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The First Broadband Olympics [24.09.07]

As a nine-year old kid, I was lucky to be at the Moscow Olympics of 1980.  Being at the opening ceremony, seeing the soccer finals (where GDR and Czechoslovakian teams fought a nice battle), watching boxers and rowers competing for gold medals, was simply a “dream-come-true” moment.  I can only imagine how cool it would be to send a live video of the flying Olympic “Mishka” mascot to my school mates!  Well, Chinese telecom companies promise just this at the Beijing Olympics. 

China Mobile will launch its HSPA network in 2008 as a part of its strategy to provide high speed wireless communications during the Beijing Olympics in 2008.  Zhou Yi, China Mobile’s General Manager of the Department of Olympic Games said that China Mobile will launch 3G networks in 6 Chinese cities during the Olympics.  China Mobile will offer a wide spectrum of mobile applications including “live” broadcast of the Games, mobile multimedia services, blogging for journalists, video conferencing services and mobile video-monitoring.
 
The company will also deploy WLAN and WiMAX networks during the Beijing Olympics. “Mobile broadband communication will serve a significant role during the Olympics,” said confident Zhou Yi.

Analysts believe that this Olympics will become the broadband Olympics, and will serve as a testing ground for Western and Chinese companies.  TD-SCDMA is also set to take the center stage: 10 cities have scheduled trials of this technology.  China Telecom and China Netcom are expanding their TD-CDMA networks in Baoding and Qingdao, while China Mobile is deploying its networks in seven other cities including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Shengyang, Tsinghuangdao and Xiamen.

Hu Jian, Deputy Director for TD-SCDMA business development at ZTE, one of the largest Chinese networking and wireless equipment vendors, said that the company recently won one of the largest tenders to expand the China Mobile network.  During the Broadband Asia Forum in Beijing he said that despite some existing issues on energy consumption and network planning, TD-SCDMA was in principal ready for commercial use.  ZTE will supply over 3,000 base stations for construction of the Beijing network.

In October 2007 China Mobile is set to begin its trial of new applications and services, including video calls and streaming video and mobile TV.  Yet due to the limitations of the local 3G standard, Chinese operators are seriously considering use of WiMax as a complimentary technology.  After obtaining approval from the Organizational Committee of the Beijing Olympics, China Mobile announced that it will launch WiMax  and Wi-Fi networks in Beijing and its surrounding areas.  At  the same time China Netcom also is engaged in WiMax and McWiLL (Multicarrier Wireless Internet Local Loop) trials.  McWiLL operates based on SCDMA technology on 400MHz frequency.  China Netcom is set to use McWiLL in Qingdao during the water sports competitions.