Good news, bad news and more bad news. To start, Li Shihe, the former Datang Telecom exec who gets a lot of credit for advancing TD-SCDMA in China, believes that handsets aren’t the bottleneck for TD-SCDMA. That’s the good news. 

The bad news: We don’t believe that. There aren’t enough attractive handsets on the market yet and that will take time to change. Part of the problem remains that the TD chips aren’t small enough yet to make ultra-slick handsets.

The 'more bad news': Li says there are two bottlenecks to quick uptake of 3G in China – network optimization and a workable business model. Yes, these are hardly minor things, but Li says everyone needs to be patient, including those pesky, bottom-line watching investors in China Mobile (the unfortunate owner of said TD-SCDMA network).

How patient? Well, Li said during the roll-out of 2G, it took Beijing five years to optimize. In Japan, he notes, operators spent five years prepping and optimizing 3G nets, while European countries spent 2-3 years.