China’s PHS service unaffected by spectrum reshuffle

BEIJING—China’s plans to reassign radio bands for third-generation (3G) mobile services will not affect the small but budding local wireless services offered by fixed-line carrier China Telecom. The service has around 4 million subscribers in China, but is technically outlawed by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

MII is to take back three radio frequency bands: 1880 MHz to1900 MHz, 1920 MHz to 2025 MHz and 2110 MHz to 2200 MHz. The “Xiao Lingtong” or “Little Smart” service operates in the 1900 MHz to 1920 MHz band and would not be affected.

Main suppliers to the network based on PHS technology are UT Starcom, Lucent Technology and China’s Zhongxing Telecom (ZTE).