Several developments in Asia/Pacific this week show companies lining up to take a crack at China's long-awaited 3G market, where licenses are now tentatively expected in early 2008.

    Fixed-line operator China Netcom Corp. Ltd. (NYSE: CN - message board; Hong Kong: 0906), for one, is looking to 3G as part of its strategy to offset declining wireline growth in the face of China's mobile boom. The carrier's first-half revenues, announced yesterday, increased just 0.4 percent from the previous year, to 40.7 billion yuan renminbi (US$5.36 billion), while fixed-line subscribers grew by 1.1 million over the end of 2006. (See China Netcom Reports 1H07.)

    Overall, Chinese operators added 4.9 million fixed-line subscribers in the first six months of the year, compared with 40.6 million mobile subscribers.

    China Netcom's parent company is one of three operators given the go-ahead by the Chinese government to build trial networks for Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA), the country's home-grown 3G standard. Deployments began during the first quarter.

    Chinese news agency Inter fax reports the carrier is set to begin testing TD-SCDMA handsets in the city of Qingdao this month, and Netcom CEO Zuo Xunsheng told reporters yesterday that commercial use of the network is slated to begin by the first quarter of 2008 -- although there's still no word from the government on when licenses will finally be issued.

    China's 3G licenses have been repeatedly delayed over the past couple of years as the government pushed the development of TD-SCDMA over wideband CDMA and CDMA2000. (See China's 3G Gets Green Light.) While the government has promised to have 3G services up and running in time for the summer Olympic Games in Beijing, some analysts remain skeptical that the operators will see licenses before 2009.