China began to develop its own terrestrial transmission standard in 2001. Proposals made by Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiaotong University were later merged into a final draft proposal.

The Shanghai version borrowed some principles from the US standard and is suitable for transmission in sparsely populated remote areas, while the Tsinghua proposal is based on the same modulation method as current and future mobile communication standards and has its own patents, which will cut royalty costs.

Zeng Huiming, editor of the Radio and TV Information magazine, said the standard came out late, because of the process of reaching a compromise, but it may not be a big problem for the industry, as China has just started to promote the terrestrial transmission model.

He believed that an essentially Chinese version of the standard would not pose a serious threat to foreign equipment manufacturers, as many of them were already involved in the Chinese proposals and plenty of time remains for them to adapt the new standard.

Sun Min, vice-president and board secretary of Tsinghua Tongfang Co Ltd, agreed: "This is just a beginning with this standard. The real commercial benefits still depend on future development."

Sun's company, a flagship enterprise of Tsinghua University, is believed to be a major beneficiary of the Tsinghua standard.

He said his firm had been working on some transmission and network construction trials, but these remain in their infancy.

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