BEIJING-The 3G Planning Group of the State Information Office of the Chinese government has discussed a proposal to waive royalties on TD-SCDMA equipment to attract more manufacturers to produce equipment according to the standard and operators to use the technology.
Since TD-SCDMA has mainly been developed by state-owned Datang Technology, in collaboration with Siemens, it will be up to the government to decide whether to slash or completely waive any royalties.
Qualcomm claims it is owed some royalties, as it claims to own part of the technology used in TD-SCDMA. Chinese companies involved dispute this. Royalty payments are a major profit earner for Qualcomm.
Nokia announced royalties on rival technology W-CDMA would be kept below 5 percent.
