China Unicom will be expanding the commercial trials of its WCDMA based network to a further 168 cities during this month. The operator, which started 3G services in May, is already testing its 3G network in 100 cities.
According to The South China Morning Post, the newly added cities are in 18 provinces — including Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Hunan, Liaoning, Sichuan and Yunnan.
China Unicom expects that its capital expenditure reaches $8.8 billion during this year, with a further $5.8 billion to be spent in 2010. On the similar note, the company’s chairman (Chang Xiaobing) said that they expect to see their 3G services turn a profit during next year…
Competition wise, China Mobile recently said that it plans to spend $8.6 billion on its own network during 2009, whereas China Telecom’s CDMA-based 3G network already covers 300 cities…
[Via: CellularNews]