Five telecom terminal makers will soon get the nod to join an alliance of companies involved in the development of China's home-grown wireless communication standard.

"We have singled them out from 17 applicants this year to strengthen our alliance,'' said Yang Hua, secretary-general of the TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) Alliance.

Yang was speaking on Friday in Beijing at a seminar focusing on the development of TD-SCDMA, the home-grown third generation (3G) of wireless telecommunications standard.

Established in October last year, the alliance was launched by eight domestic companies to develop the standard.

"But we are not going to name the five companies until the end of this year,'' he said.

A company's contribution to the TD-SCDMA system and to the TD-SCDMA patent are the two major criteria for admission into the alliance this time around, he said.

All five firms are either domestic or joint ventures.

Meanwhile, some specific requirements have also been underlined to allow the other 12 applicants, who are not enrolled this time, to join the alliance later, Yang said.

"We firmly believe that China's postponed release of 3G licences will help the standard to better compete with the other two--WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) and CDMA2000,'' said Yang, who is also general manager of Datang Mobile Communications Equipment Co Ltd, developer of the home-grown standard.

According to Yang, all the six major China telecom operators including China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom, China Netcom have all set conduct field tests based on TD-SCDMA networks.

"The Chinese Government should not issue the licences at least before the second half of next year,'' stressed Yu Dehai, director of the New Industry Research Department of the Research Centre under the State Assets Regulatory and Management Commission of the State Council.

Yu believes that further developing the home-grown standard will be "strategically important'' for China to better position itself in the global competition in 3G.

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