Japan's IPMobile to flip from TD-CDMA to TD-SCDMA

IPMobile, the beleaguered licensee in Japan that has been trying to roll out TD-CDMA technology, said it anticipates more than $100 million in support from Distacom Group, a Hong Kong-based investment company, to enable it to roll out services. However, the operator intends to switch from TD-CDMA technology to the Chinese-developed TD-SCDMA 3G standard.

In September, IPMobile saw NextWave sell its 69.23-percent stake [1] in the company back to Mori Trust after purchasing the stake the month prior. NextWave decided its chances of making a profit in the highly competitive Japanese market were slim. NextWave bought the stake to further the deployment of TD-CDMA since it has an interest in developing the technology after acquiring TD-CDMA technology developer IPWireless in April [2].

IPMobile will now ask for permission from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs to switch technologies as it runs into a deadline that requires the operator to roll out service in November.

"Considering more than 20 worldwide vendors have already developed more than 100 kinds of handsets, TD-SCDMA will drastically change procurement costs for equipment and our competitiveness in Japan," said IPMobile.

To read more about IPMobile's TD-SCDMA plans:
- take a look at this article [3] from Nikkei Electronics

Related articles:
NextWave struggles in second quarter [4] 
Can NextWave create economies of scale for TD-CDMA? [5]