The Boise, Idaho-based vendor has filed a countervailing duty case with the US Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission. Micron said the suit identifies multi-billion dollar bailout packages and loan subsidies to Korean DRAM vendors. These contravened US Countervailing Duty Laws and World Trade Organization agreements, said Micron. Countervailing duties are imposed on imports to offset the effect of subsidies provided to manufacturers by foreign governments.

The Korean subsidies had caused economic injury to Micro and other DRAM producers, the suit claims. It asks for the ITC and DoC to impose countervailing duty against Korean imports.

In June German chip giant Infineon complained to the European Commission that the Korean government was subsidizing local DRAM vendors. Infineon’s complaint singled out Hynix as a recipient of subsidies.

Micron has a good knowledge of the workings of the Korean memory industry. For much of the early part of this year it was in negotiations to buy up faltering Korean memory vendor Hynix. The deal fell apart due to disagreements between the firm’s board and creditors, many of which are state-owned enterprises.China Government Backs Local 3G Standard

China’s government is to help fast-track the development of the country’s home-grown 3G technology in an effort to launch it commercially in late 2004.

The government is promising cash, spectrum and incentives for domestic companies to back the technology, which is known as TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access). It may also delay 3G licensing until the technology is ready to give it a better chance of competing with more mature standards such as WCDMA and CDMA2000. TD-SCDMA is expected to be cheaper, more flexible and offer more bandwidth than its rivals.

TD-SCDMA has been primed for commercial deployment principally by Xian, China-based Datang Telephone Corp and Munich, Germany-based Siemens AG since June 2000. It was initially developed by the China Academy of Telecommunications Technology (CATT).

Source: CBRonline