SHANGHAI will launch 3G service based on the home-grown technology in the first quarter next year, later than industry expectation of October, a Datang Mobile's senior official told Shanghai Daily yesterday.

Construction of the TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access) network covering the Inner Ring region is scheduled to be done in October and China Mobile will test the network until the end of this year, said Yang Guiliang, Datang Mobile's senior vice president.

Datang Mobile, which has secured a tender from China Mobile to construct TD-SCDMA access networks in Shanghai and Guangdong Province, will build 1,200 to 1,500 TD-SCDMA base stations in Shanghai, according to Yang.

"We focus on TD-SCDMA network construction and TD-SCDMA chip research but we won't provide Datang-brand phones within a short period (after the TD-SCDMA phone launch)," said Yang.

China Mobile will buy two million TD-SCDMA phones in October for the coming commercial launch, said Chen Haofei, secretary general of the TD-SCDMA Forum.

About 18 phone makers, including ZTE Corp, Samsung, LG and Huawei Technologies, will compete for a share of the TD-SCDMA phone pie. More than 20 phone models, including Samsung and LG phones, are based on Datang Mobile's technology, Yang said.

China will probably issue a TD-SCDMA license first to support the home-grown technology and then give out licenses later based on the two other more widely-used global standards - CDMA 2000 and WCDMA (wideband-CDMA).

High-end TD-SCDMA phones support mobile TV functions and will feature download speed of one or two megabits per second - 10 times faster than the most advanced current 2G phones, Yang added.