22 May 2000) As part of its large impending expansion, China Unicom plans to award big bucks to
telecom equipment suppliers and is currently reviewing 12 sets of tender documents from domestic
and foreign manufacturers including Lucent, Nortel and Motorola, the May 16 Renmin Youdian
(People's Post & Telecommunications) reported.
The company says it will give priority to foreign firms with joint ventures in China that produce code
division multiple access (CDMA) mobile phone network equipment. By the end of last year, the
capacity of China Unicom?s CDMA network was 3.15 million lines, which served 100,000
subscribers, according to the newspaper. This year, the company will begin construction as soon as
possible of a CDMA network through a plan that combines technology and trade.
China Unicom?s intention is to cover China?s key cities, expand its CDMA network capacity to 11.3
million lines covering 250 cities, acquire 5 million subscribers through the network and launch these
services this year.
The telecom company plans to invest 28.9 billion renminbi (US$3.5 billion) in the mobile
communications sector and Rmb 5.9 billion (US$712.6 million) more in the wireless paging sector,
the newspaper reported.
This investment will boost the capacity of China Unicom?s mobile communications system by 16.46
million lines and that of its global system for mobile communications (GSM) network by 5.16 million
lines.
Similarly, the capacity of China Unicom?s CDMA network system will increase by 11.3 million lines
and its total system capacity will rise to 25.77 million lines with 26,000 base stations, while the
number of its mobile communications subscribers will increase by 8.4 million and its total subscribers
will reach 13.7 million.
By the end of last year, China Unicom had launched its GSM network services in 185 cities, while in
2000 it will serve more than 313 cities at the prefect level.
China Unicom's share of China?s mobile telephone market grew from 5 percent in 1998 to 11
percent last year, with this figure set to increase to more than 17 percent in 2000, the newspaper
reported.
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