This month Developing Telecoms takes the opportunity of the hugely influential and successful 3GSM Barcelona conference and exhibition to look at the state of 3G in emerging markets. Our review starts in China, with a look at 3G on both a national basis and from the perspective of one of the country’s SARs.

Also in the review, Macau’s CTM has selected Comptel to provide its provision and mediation solutions for this year’s planned roll-out of 3G. Overall intention is for a single interface to cover the entire fulfilment workflow - from service order to start of billing.

And finally, at last year’s 3GSM nine Indian mobile operators met to discuss a common policy for promoting sustainability. Under the guise of the Cellular Operators' Association of India they have recently met to select a range of services that will enable them to activate and sustain mobile communities. Their decision to engage fastmobile and Jataayu to achieve this will be the first major deployment of instant messaging services that will adhere to the principles of the GSM Association's Personal IM initiative, also launched at 3GSM 2006.