In 1999, some big and small things happened in China's telecommunications industry.

In June of the same year, China Mobile Communications Group was established, and China Communications officially entered the era of three-way competition among China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile.

On July 2, China Mobile's phone number was increased to 11 digits.

During this period, foreign mobile phone manufacturers attempted to enter the Chinese market several times, but were rejected by the Ministry of Information Industry on the grounds that the market was not mature.

Wan Feng knew that no matter how much he tried to protect the interests of domestic manufacturers now, after China joined the WTO in 2002, this market would be open to foreign mobile phone manufacturers.

However, Wan Feng has nothing to worry about. Not to mention in 2002, even if Huaguang were to open up now, he wouldn't take it seriously. It can be said that Huaguang has already led the trend in 2G mobile phones.

Every once in a while, Huaguang Mobile will launch a batch of mobile phones with new features.

These features will be released about a year earlier than the previous generation, always keeping Huaguang mobile phones in a leading position.

For example, wireless Internet access and handwriting mobile phones, which were only available in 2000 in the previous life, have been released one after another this year, and mobile phones that can play MP3s will be released soon.

Next year, Huaguang Mobile will launch a color screen mobile phone.

If Gu Hongzhong can figure out how to research the camera, Huaguang might be able to launch a mobile phone that can take pictures by the end of next year. Of course, the pixel count won't be very high, maybe 100,000 or 200,000 at most.

Like Nokia's 1100, which sold 200 million units worldwide in 2003, Wanfeng was planning to launch it in 2002.

Everything was planned by Wan Feng. With someone like him who has cheats, others can't expect to surpass him.

Of course, Nanwan Group also has the technical strength. It can be said that at this time, Nanwan Group has achieved the point where it can do nothing on its own in the field of mobile phones and computers.

Although the Ministry of Information Industry rejected the requests of foreign manufacturers to enter the Chinese market, domestic manufacturers were able to carry out mobile phone projects without any obstacles.

In August 1999, a mobile phone that was later known as the fighter jet among mobile phones appeared on the market.

It is the Bird RC818.

The emergence of Bird RC818 broke the monopoly of Huaguang mobile phones in China.

The predecessor of Bird Corporation was Fenghua Bird Corporation. After successfully developing the pager in 1993, it began to focus on the communications business.

In 1996, digital pagers and stock pagers were successfully developed and put into production. By 1997, annual sales of pagers reached 320,000 units. It was not until 1998 that pager sales exceeded one million units.

In August 1999, Bird's first 2G mobile phone was launched.

It can be seen that whether it is pagers or mobile phones, Bird lags far behind Huaguang Technology.

When Bird's pager sales exceeded one million, Huaguang began to stop producing and selling pagers.

When Huaguang's mobile phone sales were approaching eight million units, Bird's first mobile phone was released.

In the previous life, starting from 2000, Bird mobile phones were the sales champion of domestic mobile phones, with 700,000 units sold that year.

In the following years, it won the sales champion of domestic brand mobile phones for several consecutive years and won the reputation of being a fighter among mobile phones.

But in this life, although it has appeared, it is destined not to have the glory of the previous life, as an opponent that it cannot overcome stands in front of it.

This opponent is insurmountable.

Wan Feng has nothing to worry about Bird making mobile phones. What he is worried about is that if foreign manufacturers find out that domestic manufacturers in China can make mobile phones, they might create some messy joint ventures like they did with cars.

Although Huaguang is not afraid of competition, it is reasonable for it to block these troubles through legitimate means.

Therefore, Wan Feng discussed with the Ministry of Information Industry and issued a temporary document. Although the wording was high-sounding, the content was only one thing: any company that jointly produced mobile phones with foreign companies would be illegal and would not obtain network access permission and business license from the Ministry of Information Industry.

This hole was blocked in advance.

While Wan Feng was plugging the hole, the issue of the third-generation mobile phone standards was also being carried out intensively, led by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications' Institute of Telecommunications Science and Technology, which later became Datang.

This is China's own TD-SCDMA standard.

However, domestic manufacturers of communication base stations at that time had little confidence in the formulation of this standard, and there were few responses.

Even Yin Zhenfei is not optimistic about this standard.

There were more than 30 people attending the meeting, and the debate was very intense. 90% of them were skeptical.

People's suspicions are justified. International standards have always been dominated by foreigners. It is very costly and difficult to develop mobile communication standards. Our country has no such precedent. Can we afford to play this game?

Song Zhiyuan, then Director of the Science and Technology Committee of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, made the final decision: "China cannot always rely on foreign technology to develop its mobile communications industry. We must have a first attempt. The first attempt may not be successful, but it will provide valuable experience. I support them in promoting TD-SCDMA internationally. If it fails, we will see it as a victory, a bold attempt by the Chinese to innovate and a contribution to the country."

This is the final decision.

It was also thanks to Song Zhiyuan's decision. Without his decision, TD-SCDMA would not have become one of the three major standards for third-generation mobile phones.

In that case, it is hard to say how China's telecommunications industry will develop in the next four or even five generations.

Although Song Zhiyuan made the decision, few people responded.

It was Wan Feng who persuaded Yin Zhenfei to let Hua Wei participate.

Yin Zhenfei may not listen to others, but he still listened to Wan Feng's words.

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content!