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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (3962)	12/23/2004 5:53:14 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

China to speed up decision on 3G mobile phone licenses - report , 12.23.04, 12:39 PM ET AFX News Limited BEIJING (AFX) - China will speed up its decision over issuing long-awaited 3G licenses, the Guangming Daily reported, citing Xi Guohua, vice minister of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII). Xi was quoted by the official communist party newspaper as saying that it is time for the government to make its decision over the issue. He said that the MII had after recent 3G field tests, concluded that WCDMA technology is "near mature" for commercialization, while the home-grown TD-SCDMA standard has made great progress. Xi also said that current competition among domestic telecom operators is not effective as they do not occupy balanced positions. China has four major telecom players. China Mobile and China Unicom offer mobile services while China Telecom and China Netcom operate fixed-line services. But mobile subscribers have increased faster then fixed-line users which has put the two fixed-line operators in a disadvantageous position, Xi said. China had 329.92 mln mobile subscribers at the end of November, compared with 313.16 mln fixed-line users, according to MII data. Xi said this imbalance left the fixed-line players no choice but to develop "Xiao Lingtong", a fixed-line service with limited mobility. But he added that this is an intermediate technology and companies should be allowed to operate a full range of services and technologies, of their own choosing. He also said that the ministry will allow the market to decide telecom service prices in the long-term. allen.feng@xinhuafinance.com Copyright 2004 AFX News Limited. All Rights Reserved. forbes.com