France Telecom's research unit in Beijing is assessing China's locally developed 3G standard, which its parent company may consider using in Europe at a later date, according to a Dow Jones report.
The report said China's TD-SCDMA standard used a different frequency spectrum for mobile phone calls and data transfers from the other two 3G standards, W-CDMA and cdma2000.
The report also said France Telecom R&D in Beijing applied to join the TD-SCDMA Forum, a group that promoted technical exchanges on the Chinese standard, earlier this month.
That application was approved by the forum, the report said.
"There is a possibility we will consider using TD-SCDMA in Europe when the frequency spectrum for W-CDMA in Europe runs out of capacity," R&D Beijing's public relations manager, Li Juan, was quoted by Dow Jones as saying.
France Telecom's wireless division, Orange, held the frequency spectrum in Europe that supported TD-SCDMA, she said.
China is testing TD-SCDMA networks in several cities nationwide, but there are still no commercial networks based on the standard.