China to decide on 3G mobile phone licenses
(crienglish.com)
Updated: 2005-01-14 15:33

China is poised to decide on its first 3G licenses, the next generation of mobile phone technology, a decision that is being anxiously awaited by telecom operators.

The decision on the development of the country's third generation mobile communication system will be made at "the proper time this year," the Xinhua news agency quoted Wang Xudong, Minister of Information Industry (MII), as saying on Wednesday.

China's four major telecom operators -- China Mobile and China Unicom which provide mobile services, and China Telecom and China Netcom. All are in fierce competition and desperately want 3G licences.

Beijing has been slow in making decisions on 3G as it has been concerned that too many licenses could lead to huge fixed-asset losses if the technology fails.

Amid talk that the government is planning a major restructuring of the telecom industry this year, Xinhua said that Beijing could merge the four major telecom operators into two.

The central government also wants to give the home-grown 3G technology, TD-SCDMA, more time to get mature.

There are three 3G standards, WCDMA, CDMA2000 and China's TD-SCDMA.

After 3G field tests it concluded that WCDMA and CDMA200 technology were "near mature" for commercialisation, while the TD-SCDMA standard has made great progress, Xi Guohua, MII vice minister said late last month.

At a meeting Wednesday the telecom regulator also said it expects China to add 100 million new telephone users this year, bringing the total to over 750 million, with mobile phone subscribers increasing 58 million.

At the end of November last year China had 329.92 million mobile phone users, up near 60 million during the 11-month period, while fixed-line subscribers hit 313 million at the end of that month, up 50 million.

MII targets revenue from the telecommunication industry of 635 billion yuan (76 billion dollars) for 2005, up 10.4 percent, the report said.

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