The new round of public bidding for China Mobile's (CHL) TD-SCDMA project has started.

China Mobile reportedly called in TD-SCDMA suppliers for a meeting on the afternoon of February 28 and distributed a questionnaire about the project to those suppliers to ask about the prices that suppliers are offering. The bidding will be divided into two parts, involving core network and equipment, and each part has 5 suppliers to join the bidding.

For the core network, suppliers include Huawei, ZTE, Nokia and Erricsson.

For the equipment part, an expert from the Telecom Institute of the Ministry of Information Industry said that because it is a large-scale network project, the requirements are much stricter than previous telecom roll-outs. Therefore, China Mobile will soon issue a new guideline for the types of standards it is seeking in the equipment used on the network.

Five suppliers have also already entered the testing phase, including Datang, Potevio, ZTE, TD Tech and an unnamed Guangdong corporation. Among them, Potevio and ZTE already passed the first test on February 21.