BOCOG has confirmed earlier reports that TD-SCDMA will be used during the 2008 Olympics:
News reporters, athletes and attendees will all be able to take advantage of 3G telecommunications at the Olympics, said Susan Li, deputy division chief in the technology department’s telecommunication division at BOCOG.
“This is no easy task,” she said, “considering the Olympic Games are spread through 31 venues, including several outside of Beijing.”
BOCOG had already partnered with China Mobile to provide GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) and WLAN (wireless-LAN) services at Olympic buildings and venues. But now China Mobile has committed to providing 3G services at the Games, she said.
Bragging about having TD-SCDMA at "all 31" venues is a far cry from some of the predictions for TD-SCDMA from just a few years ago.
And who exactly is going to take advantage of 3G services? Not foreign tourists, since none of them will have a TD-SCDMA compatible phone. Nor will the vast majority of Chinese visitors from the rest of the country. Perhaps BOCOG could give a free phone them to the thousands of media members who will be covering the Games, though many reporters will likely be reluctant to use them, even after the story of steamed buns filled with cardboard the detailed database the government is building turns out to be another reporter’s error.
Increasingly it looks like only a few early adopters in Beijing and a handful of other cities running TD-SCDMA trials, along with perhaps the athletes themselves (assuming BOCOG chips in and gives them freebies), will be making use of the technology during the Olympics.
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