People in Guizhou point out that some places in China have mountains, and some places have lakes, but Guizhou has lots of both. I also thought it had lots of 3G, based on the gazillion ads for it from China Mobile and China Telecom that greeted me at the airport and are peppered all over town.

I’m still trying to connect to China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA service in Guiyang, the provincial capital, but no luck from my hotel. Maybe I’m in a dead spot, although I would think the area I’m in should be designated a hot spot.

The more important thing is that the battle for 3G users is well underway, even in a lesser known provincial capital like Guiyang. Not surprisingly, China Mobile is flexing its muscle. It seems to have 4x-5x the number of ads that China Telecom has put up, including a half-page ad on the front page of today’s Guizhou Business Daily.

China Unicom’s presence is almost nonexistent, for now – it will be the last operator to launch 3G services, near the end of May. Oddly, that may be a good thing because it can benefit from all the early ads by its competitors in promoting 3G and then it can swoop in with much better W-CDMA phone selection to attract users. Something worth considering.

Anyway, that’s it from Guiyang. I’ll write a letter from Kunming in a few days.