China Mobile, one of the nation's three leading mobile operators, is to provide 600 million yuan (US$88.24 million) to support the research and development of terminal devices for TD-SCDMA, the domestically-developed 3G standard.

According to a cooperation agreement the company signed with nine mobile phone manufacturers and three chipset producers on Sunday, the two sides would pour 1.2 billion yuan into the R&D project.

The newly-launched R&D project will focus on the design of a flagship mobile phone model that supports broadband internet, and a more economical one whose market price will be under 1,000 yuan, said the company.

CDMA, or Code Division Multiple Access, is a method for transmitting multiple digital signals simultaneously over the same carrier frequency, and is most widely applied for mobile phones.

Covered by the CDMA network, users could enjoy faster wireless data downloads, make video calls and watch TV programs via mobile phones.

China's three telecom companies use different CDMA standards. They each order terminals from different mobile phone makers which support their own standards.

China Unicom uses the European-developed WCDMA, China Telecom uses the US-developed CDMA2000, while China Mobile uses the domestically-developed TD-SCDMA.

(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2009)