The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said it had rejected Xinwei Telecom's plan to issue up to 40 million new local currency shares on the exchange. But CSRC did not elaborate further.

Officials from Xinwei Telecom declined to comment. But the Beijing-based company plans to restart the IPO process in six months, according to China Business News.

Xinwei Telecom, founded in 1995, is a joint venture between Datang Group and US-based Cwill. The company has sole intellectual property rights to the synchronous code division multiple access (SCDMA) standard for wireless access service, the core technology behind China's TD-SCDMA 3G standard.

Analysts said the setback would cloud the market prospects of SCDMA, selected by China's Ministry of Information Industry as the preferred solution to provide telephone services to rural villages.

According to Xinwei Telecom's prospectus, the company has seen brisk growth in the past three years. Its sales revenue was 1.09 billion yuan (US$104 million) by the end of 2005, compared with 185 million yuan in 2003.

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