China has long promised that third-generation mobile phone technology will be available at the Beijing Olympics, but international travelers shouldn't expect seamless service. The two 3G standards widely available in the rest of the world are unlikely to work in Beijing, experts say, meaning visitors will be faced with the choice of either getting a new phone that uses China's homegrown technology, or putting up with significantly slower Internet connections than they're used to. Beijing has thus far only made arrangements to offer 3G - which allows high-speed Internet surfing and video downloads - through a locally produced standard called Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access, or TD-SCDMA. The other 3G technologies - CDMA2000 widely used in North America and South Korea and Wideband CDMA, used in Europe and most of Asia - have been offering users high speed mobile Internet for years.
But Beijing has never licensed mobile operators to use them in China, opting instead to wait years for the development of TD-SCDMA. China Mobile Communications Corp., parent of Hong Kong-listed China Mobile Ltd., said it will offer TD-SCDMA during the Olympics in partnership with South Korea's Samsung Electronics, the world's No. 2 cellphone maker by shipments.