Guillaume d’Eyssautier, President and CEO of picoChip, commented, “We are delighted to have Willtek as such a close partner. Willtek was the company’s first design win and it is extremely gratifying that they have used our technology to develop such a strong portfolio of independently developed standards. Testing and conformance is a highly critical component to 3G with its extreme complexity, and it is notable for the TD-SCDMA market that Willtek can support its deployment with this.”
Matthias Weber, Director of Product Marketing of Willtek Communications added, “picoChip technology continues to lead the pack with its flexibility and performance. We originally selected picoChip so that we could address multiple standards: with the launch of TD-SCDMA we now have three protocols on the same platform, all developed extremely efficiently.”
Industry observers expect China to offer a 3G service by 2008, when the Olympic Games will be held there. In the meantime, a new operational trial of TD-SCDMA, the home-grown 3G standard, commenced on November 7 in Beijing, Shanghai and three other cities in China. The trial TD-SCDMA network involves 20,000 subscribers.
TD-SCDMA was developed in China, and is one of the three Third Generation mobile standards in use in the world. The new services, which include video conferencing, movie downloads and multi-player 3D games, are expected to create a huge new market for telecom equipment makers, mobile carriers and service providers.