More on China, from Ramsey:
Unicom Bets Twelve Billion on CDMA
Chinabytes(2/23/01), in a forum held on Feb, 13, Unicom ceo Yang Xianzu announced that they are working with Qualcomm on building the world's largest cdma network and spending 12 billion dollars. The network will cover more than 200 cities and with capacity of 13.3 million.
Unicom announced cdma plan three years ago. Why it only starts now? The behind the scene stories became a hot topic at the meeting. According to high level company officials, the on and off again of the cdma network is due to the dragging on of the US-China trade negotiations. Unicom's use of the american Qualcomm's cdma technology for nationwide network became a major card in the hands of chinese delegates. The transferring of GreatWall cdma network to China Unicom is also attached to the trade issue.
Until China was assured it's WTO entry, the cdma network again became possible.
Contrast with the upbeat of Unicom, people at the GreatWall network are just having a missing feeling. An executive at GreatWall revealed that, Unicom has established a subsidiary several months ago. The New Time and Space will be a financially independent subsidiary. Employees here all agree this is the begining of the end of the GreatWall name.
This executive also expressed his grief that the head of the new subsidiary has been kept vacum for long.
At Xizimeng Telecom Street of Beijing, several stores are selling cdma handsets. At the 133cdma counter, only two types of cdma handset are on sale, both from Samsung. According to salesperson, there used to be Motorola handsets also. They were discontinued because of large size and not sold well. Due to the limitation to only very few cities, GreatWall 133net has not done well.
According to one user, different from GSM, the handset is not using SIM card. Phone number is input by a computer. Technically, cdma has a broader channel and thus a very clear voice matching a fixed line phone. Currently, GreatWall charges 25 yuan monthly fee and a .20 yuan per minute charge.
According to Bloomgerg news, Unicom ceo Yang said they are trying to get roaming agreement with japanese and korean carriers. But he refused to discuss in detail. Industry analyst think this may be Unicom's siganl to attract alliance with NTT Docomo and Korea Telecom. But they also wonder, how Unicom can do the tri-country roaming at 2G stage. Chinese experts think roaming is only possible in the same mobile mode. Korean Telecom is using cdma, but Docomo is using PDC. Roaming into Korea is easy, but not feasible to Japan. Unless Docomo is builing a Japan cdma network. The other possibility is to wait to 3g wCDMA. However, all bets are based on an alliance between Unicom and Docomo.
-translated from cn.news.yahoo.com
Lazy-bum owes me one share of Qualcomm. Right?
laodeng
BTW, speculation on existing of 3.3 million capacity is off. The chosing of 13.3 million is for "luck" because 133 matches the first three digits of the phone numbers reserved for GreatWall, so called 133net.
The New Time and Space named it's new CEO who is currently a general manage at one of Unicom's provincial branch. |
