Olympic 3G goes live with 15,000 free phones

It looks like China really has done it: after seemingly never-ending delays, according to local news service Xinhua, China has now got its 3G service up and running in just a matter of months and yes, it will be ready for the influx of visitors for the Olympics later this year.

China Mobile is giving away 15,000 3G handsets to Olympics officials and 3 million yuan of call credit to boot, says Xinhua. They’ll be able to get the higer-speed TD-SCDMA connection in eight cities, five of which will be hosting the Olympics.

China Mobile first started testing the service back in April – it’s amazing that it will go from pilot to full launch within four months. Some people take that long to test an application, not an entire network. Or am I being too optimistic – is a short testing period likely to signify a network that hasn’t had all the gruelling testing it needs?