Seminar on Communication Technology Development Strategies was held in Mudanjiang from July 25 to 26, hosted by Department of High and New Technology Development and Industrialization of MOST and the expert group on information technology of National 863 Plan, jointly organized by ZTE and FuTURE FORUM. Mainly concerning the orientation and subjects for the future mobile communication development in the twelveth five-year plan, the seminar consulted with the the experts from the operators, universities, and manufacturers, in order to grasp the technical development trend, intact social requirements, and numbers of key technologies, as well as to form the report for the technical development strategy, preparing for the prephase investigation for the national twelveth five-year plan for the R&D of high technologies.

The seminar was attended by the leaders from the relative departments, including Mr. Qiang Xiaozhe, Director of Division of Information and Space, Department of High and New Technology Development and Industrialization of MOST, Mr. Ji Zhiyuan and Mr. Fu Yaowei, Director and Vice Director of Division of Information of High Technology Industry Development Center of MOST, and Mr. Wang Baiyi, who is in charge of the programme.More than fourty reputed experts on communication were invited to join the seminar, including Mr. Liu Yunjie, Director of the Science & Technology Committee of China Unicom, Prof. You Xiaohu from SEU, Ms. Cao Shumin, Vice President of CATR, Mr. Chen Shanzhi, General Engineer of Datang Telecom, Mr. Li Shihe, Chief Technical Consultant of Datang Mobile, Ms. Zhao Huiling, VP of China Telecom Institute, Ms. Wang Xiaoyun, VP of China Mobile R&D Center, Mr. Hu Jian, VP of ZTE, Prof. Zhu Shihua from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Prof. Li Shaoqian from UESTC, Prof. Zhu Jinkang from HUST, Prof. Wang Jing from Tsinghua University, and Prof. Zhang Ping from BUPT.

Director Qiang Xiaozhe made an important address on the concerns of MOST on the 12th five-year special and significant scientific and technological project and the thoughts on China’s R&D of advanced mobile communication technologies. The experts gave presentations from various areas of mobile communication, covering the subjects on the next generation network, wireless mobile communication and optical communication.

According to the experts, the integrated and converged network will be the definite trend fro the future development. The R&D of the novel network technologies that will possibly emerge in 10 or 15 years should be conducted without the restricts of IP network architecture as the structural problems existing in IP network are difficule to solve thoroughly. Regarding the wireless communication technologies, the experts pointed out that the transmission technology has approached the theoretical limitation, simultaneously faced with cellular interference and shortage of spectrum resources, and that the complex topological structure of mobile communication and the air interface will probably become an obstacle for the future development. So the experts believe that the new thoughts for the development of mobile communication should be explored such as independent communication services, cross-layer optimization, and exploration of high frequency bands. They also agreed that the development of mobile communication should not be considerd separately, as the convergence between wired and wireless technologies or between mobile communication and ICT technologies, and the integration of cross-industy and cross-region services will bring huge space for the development of mobile communication as well as new opportunities for China. As for optical communication, the experts proposed that the optical communication, with the optical network tranforming from extensive transmission mode to intensive service mode, has a promising future as the physical features of light-waves which used to be neglected will also be put in wide application.