Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Group (Datang Group) got a 30 billion yuan (US$3.89 billion) long-term bank loan from China Development Bank to support the company's 3G technology development and network construction, the company said in Beijing today.

The fund will be used to boost the development of TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access) and large-scale network construction for the coming Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, according to a statement posted on Sina.com.

Datang Mobile, the group's unlisted firm, is the major developer of TD-SCDMA, which covers chip blueprints, handset design and network construction.

"It solved the capital bottleneck of the TD-SCDMA industry and it will obviously quicken the pace of network construction," said Li Yanfeng, an analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting, a research firm under the Ministry of Information Industry.

China will probably issue a TD-SCDMA license first to support the home-grown technology and then give out licenses later based on the two other more widely-used global standards - CDMA 2000 and WCDMA (wideband-CDMA).

China Mobile has invested about six billion yuan to seven billion yuan to establish TD-SCDMA networks in 10 cities, including Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.

Shanghai will launch 3G service based on TD-SCDMA in the first quarter next year, said Yang Guiliang, Datang Mobile's senior vice president.

China Mobile will buy two million TD-SCDMA phones in October for the coming commercial launch, said Chen Haofei, secretary general of the TD-SCDMA Forum.

Datang Telecom said two weeks ago that it has no plans to restructure the listed firm's business or assets in a short period.