Observers believe the Chinese are hard at work developing a homegrown advanced standard, known as TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous cdma), and that 3G licenses will appear once TD-SCDMA is ready.

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As Mr Mason points out, there is no industry standard for modifying terms and it is not clear how well it will work, particularly at a time when house prices are falling.

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My sense, though, is that much of the success of high frequency trading operations might be along the lines of what the 21 players discovered years ago after taking the time to work through the basic math and apply the simple stuff such as standard deviation.

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The amount of work we choose to undertake is flexible, and controlling scope allows us to maintain an acceptable standard in relation to time, cost, and quality.

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