CHINA will upgrade its existing trial of a 3G network to 3.5G in Shanghai by the end of this month, which will raise the download speed by four folds in a bid to make the TD-SCDMA more attractive, industry officials said at an IT forum yesterday in Shanghai.

China started TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access) services on trial in April in 10 cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Qingdao. The home-grown 3G network will be upgraded to a HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access), better known as 3.5G, said Yang Hua, secretary general of the TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance.

"Consumers will be more satisfied with TD-SCDMA if they have good phones and network conditions. The video call, high-speed Internet access and multimedia download will attract more handset users (based on the network upgrade)," Yang said at the Spreadtrum Technology Forum 2008.

China Mobile has upgraded the network in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Yang said.

Spreadtrum has developed a HSDPA handset chip, which supports a speed of 2.8 mega bits per second, four times faster than the current TD-SCDMA speed, said Cao Qiang, its vice president.