As the world's athletes strive for gold and glory in Beijing this month, China's dominant mobile phone operator is engaged in a contest for even greater stakes: the battle to establish the commercial credibility of the nation's new mobile phone standard.

China Mobile, an official Olympic sponsor, is using the Games to tout a new network based on the government-backed TD-SCDMA standard as the long-awaited arrival of "third-generation" mob-ile services in the world's biggest wireless market by subscribers.