China Telecom plans to migrate its newly-acquired CDMA mobile operation to LTE technology within the next three years. According to the company’s CEO Wang Xiaochu, the operator will initially focus on rolling out EV-DO Rev. A in key cities before moving to LTE “in two to three years’ time.”
Earlier we reported that China Telecom will acquire China Unicom’s CDMA business for around $16 billion as part of a widespread restructuring of China’s telecoms market. The deal marks China Telecom’s first entry into the mobile market, which will have a combined (fixed-line and mobile) subscriber base of 256 million, following the acquisition. China Unicom/Netcom has 251.2 million subscribers and the market leader China Mobile tops at 369.3 million.
In terms of revenues, China Telecom will have combined revenue of 178.7 billion RMB, while China Unicom/Netcom and China Mobile have revenues of 145.3 billion RMB and 357 billion RMB, respectively.
[Via: commsday.com]