Qinhuangdao, the coastal city in Hebei province, is set to become the launchpad for 3G in China. China Mobile plans to open its TD-SCDMA services there in September, said sina .com, citing unnamed sources.

The city, 300 kilometers from Beijing, was chosen because of its popularity as a domestic tourist destination, in particular among senior government and party officials.

Qinghuangdao will launch in September, and the other test cities in October and December, Sina said. At this stage, the number of handsets available is not certain, and most likely the trial will begin on a limited scale, with a large-scale pilot to come later.

China Mobile’s rollout timetable stipulates that the base stations and network equipment must first be installed in Qinhuangdao.  The tender completed in March awarded the Qinhuangdao network contracts to ZTE and Putian, setting a July deadline on supply of the equipment. Reportedly Putian’s TD networking kit arrived in Qinhuangdao as early as July 12, well ahead of the contracted dates. 

To now, the TD deployment in Qinhuangdao has been completed, and China Mobile and vendor engineers are now fine-tuning the network.

The network is reported to cover Qinhuangdao city, in particular the tourist areas and Olympics hotels, as well as some of the neighboring suburbs.  Altogether some 300 base stations have been installed in Qinhuangdao city, with macro base stations, each with a radius of 30 or so kilometers, being deployed in suburban areas. According to industry sources, the network has capacity for 450,000 users.

On the vexed issue of handsets, the source said that phones from ZTE and other vendors had performed well in mobile video telephony and other tests carried out by China Mobile. ZTE is confirmed as one of the TD terminal suppliers, a leaked China Mobile document confirmed, but it is not clear whether these will be shipped to Qinhuangdao. 

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