China's long-awaited 3G spectrum licenses are one step closer to being issued after China's cabinet voted on the matter today, Reuters reports. Building a network of that scale may generate $41 billion in spending for equipment, and open up another market that can use services that require high-speed bandwidth???two things to get plenty excited about in a down economy. The licenses will back three standards???TD-SCDMA, a standard backed by the Chinese government, and WCDMA and CDMA 2000. Reuters said the announcement was made on the central government's Web site. China didn't say which companies would receive the licenses; however, it said earlier that China Mobile would likely receive the TD-SCDMA license, China Unicom would get the WCDMA, and China Telecom the CDMA 2000.
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AT&T announced today that it has successfully deployed assisted GPS technology (also known as A-GPS) within its wireless network. This should enhance existing and planned LBS services used with A-GPS capable devices. This setup will get their network ready for more expansion in the LBS category this year. AT&T plans to launch a location-enabled social networking service, AND a family-oriented service that contains top shelf privacy controls.
