China Telecom to get Palm Pre?

Enter year of Bull, the dust over 3G network licenses finally settled down in China.

For 3G network carriers to attract and retain customers, a killer smart phone or phones is undoubtly very important. ATT clearly is gaining customers by exclusively launching the iPhone in the US.


After telecom reorganization, mobile carriers in China formally entered the "Three Kingdom" era.

The biggest carrier, China Mobile will pursue domestically brewed technology, Td-sCDMA, which will be built on top of it's GSM-EDGE network. It was rumored that China Mobile will get the iPhone. But it looks like a long shot now due to compatibility issue unless Apple willing to tailor made the iPhone for China Mobile.

The second largest carrier, China Unicom will pursue worldwide dominant technology, wCDMA, or UMTS which is similar to ATT network in the US. China Unicom may get the iPhone eventually.

The smallest mobile carrier will be China Telecom, the former state monopoly of telecommunication in China.

After being split in parts, the parent company was left without mobile license for many years. The government's intention was to give enough time to nurture strong enough competitors in China Mobile, China Unicom, as well as other smaller players.

Now, with the issuance of 3G mobile licenses, China Telecom finally got it's wish and even better with a CDMA2000 network.

CDMA2000 was developed by Qualcomm. It's the most mature network with easiest migration path to 3G, so called CDMA EV-DO network.

China Unicom is predicted to spend about one year to build the wCDMA network and possible another year to fine tune it.  China Mobile may take even longer time to make the TD-sCDMA network. 

However, the migration to EV-DO 3G network may give the smallest mobile carrier China Telecom  a huge head start. Some inside the company has indicated the 3G migration could complete as early as next month. With less than 28 million subscribers, China Telecom needs the new 3G network up and running to expand it's customer base.

However, there are not many smart phones made for the CDMA 3G network that come close to the functionality of the iPhone at current time. To play catch up with the much larger carriers, China Telecom desperately wants something similar to the iPhone to attract new customers and retain old customers. With the coming of Palm Pre, it could be perfectly fit into China Telecom's expanding strategy.