Jan 27, 2005This article was originally published by RFID Update.
January 27, 2005—According to the executive director of the Article Numbering Centre of China, Zhang Chenghai, China will probably not finalize a national RFID standard in 2005. Significant progress will be made with respect to designating a frequency range for use by the technology. One of the problems that China has faced is the International Standards Organization-recommended frequencies for RFID that overlap with those already used by Chinese cellular and radio technology. To avoid interference, China would have to reallocate a smaller sub-range exclusively for RFID. The government has set about exploring this option, having conducted a feasibility test of the 917-921 MHz range. Allocating frequencies to RFID would represent a major step in the realization of a standard.
The Chinese RFID standard process has been closely watched by the North American and European RFID markets. There was speculation last year that China may develop its own standard, which would mean serious consequences for those adhering to GEN 2. First, those suppliers that import from Chinese manufacturers would have to comply by the Chinese standard if they wanted to track their goods from the point of origin. This would obviously complicate their RFID implementations, requiring the purchase and deployment of hardware and software that could deal with the Chinese standard. Second, while Chinese RFID production is modest at present, there is no reason to think that tags and readers won't eventually be produced there, as has happened in many other cases of hardware manufacturing (it starts in the US or Europe, then is ultimately offshored to less expensive Asian producers.) Clearly, if a significant portion of the world's RFID reader and tag supply were coming from China, its standard would become a contender, again forcing international companies to accommodate it.
English-language Xinhua has more
