China’s long-awaited 3G spectrum licenses are one step closer to being issued after China’s cabinet voted on the matter today, Reuters reports. Building a network of that scale may generate $41 billion in spending for equipment, and open up another market that can use services that require high-speed bandwidth—two things to get plenty excited about in a down economy. The licenses will back three standards—TD-SCDMA, a standard backed by the Chinese government, and WCDMA and CDMA 2000. Reuters said the announcement was made on the central government’s Web site. China didn’t say which companies would receive the licenses; however, it said earlier that China Mobile would likely receive the TD-SCDMA license, China Unicom would get the WCDMA, and China Telecom the CDMA 2000.