China Mobile customers get BlackBerry network boost

Research In Motion has started selling its first BlackBerry that is compatible with China Mobile's home-grown cellular standard, a move that would allow it to tap into the operator's 620 million users.

Research In Motion has started selling its first BlackBerry that is compatible with China Mobile's home-grown cellular standard, a move that would allow it to tap into the operator's 620 million users.

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RIM said it would begin selling the BlackBerry 9788, based on the TD-SCDMA 3G data network standard used by China Mobile, the world's biggest mobile operator by users.

While the BlackBerry smartphone has been available in China since late last year, China Mobile users have had to live with slower download speeds because the mobile operator uses a different, homegrown 3G standard.

Smaller rival China Unicom is the only mobile operator of the three in the country to use the more common WCDMA standard.