Beijing Mobile has started offering EDGE to its customers, though it has not made an official announcement for it. The service positioned as "2.75 Generation" and will provide a downstream speed of 190Kbps, with a peak speed of 473 Kbps, 3-4 times faster than the current speeds offered by GPRS.
This move suggests that Beijing Mobile favours a GSM evolutionary path and may also upgrade EDGE to WCDMA at a suitable time. It may be recalled that sometimes back MII (Ministry of Industry and Information) had cautioned against large scale roll out of WCDMA to protect the interest of TD-SCDMA. The EDGE route is being viewed as a sneaking strategy.
More news has become available regarding TD-SCDMA roll out that in fact reflects the Chinese government's position on this matter. It is understood that China Mobile had put forward the following three different investment plans to NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission), which is in charge of large scale nation wide investments.
Low level investment: 13 billion RMB to only cover hot spots in the urban areas
Middle level investment: 18 billion RMB to have an extensive coverage of urban areas
High level investment: 27 billion RMB to have nation wide coverage
It is understood that China Mobile favours the middle level investment considering that the 3G operators else where are struggling with it. However, NDRC favours the third investment plan to boost the development of TD-SCDMA based industry
