China Mobile 'Wireless City' to rise soon

Updated: 2011-12-15 13:27

By Shen Jingting (China Daily)

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GUANGZHOU - China Mobile Ltd, the telecom carrier with the most subscribers in the world, said it will offer a wireless service platform in about 200 Chinese cities.

The company said it is confident it will have 10 million users of that "Wireless City" by the end of the year.

The plan, which will let citizens access various types of public information on mobile phones, has been promoted by China Mobile since last year. Li Yue, chief executive officer of China Mobile, said building the Wireless City is the most important task the company has during China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).

The project is meant to benefit phone users in several ways. For instance, in Xiamen, a coastal city in eastern China, people will be able to use it to look up information about public transport, noise pollution from construction sites and health records.

To build the Wireless City, China Mobile has signed agreements with 30 provinces and autonomous regions. Through its wireless platform, the company offers access to more than 10,000 applications.

"Networks, platforms and applications are the elements that will determine the success of the 'Wireless City' plan," Li said at the China Mobile Global Developers Conference in Guangzhou on Wednesday.

"We will implement our 'four network coordinated development' strategy in wireless cities," Li said. He explained that a single network will not be able to meet China's future demand for transferring data.

In the past two years, China Mobile has set up 1.6 million wireless access points - a device that allows a wireless device to connect to a wireless network.

The company also plans to build another 6 million such points in the next three years, Li said.

China Mobile's Mobile Market, the first store selling mobile-phone applications that has been set up by a telecom operator, will contribute various applications to the Wireless City plan, the company said.

The number of times applications were downloaded from Mobile Market reached 600 million by November. The store has attracted about 150 million registered users and 2.95 million developers who want to offer their applications through the store.

On Wednesday, China Mobile introduced a Mobile Market cloud computing service, which lets developers access online resources that help them produce new applications.

Chinese telecom carriers have all moved quickly to protect their market positions at a time when mobile Internet devices have become more common. China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd, the second-largest telecom operator in China, introduced its "Wo-plus Opening System" - which will let users access various mobile applications - this past week in an attempt at attracting users and developers.