Three Chinese mobile operators — China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom — plan to invest 400 billion yuan ($58.5 billion) over the next three years to build 3G networks.
Of that amount, China Mobile alone will spend 58.8 billion yuan to build about 60,000 TD-SCDMA base stations by the end of this year, when its coverage will serve more than 70% of all Chinese cities. Two smaller rivals, China Unicom and China Telecom, will each spend about 30 billion yuan in 2009 to develop their WCDMA and CDMA 2000 based networks, respectively.
As a result of adopting WCDMA and CDMA 2000 — technologies that are widely used around the world — and because of the sheer size of China Mobile’s user base, China Unicom and China Telecom are expected to grow faster than China Mobile in terms of new users and sales. Still, China Mobile’s network will be the best over the next 2-3 years, according to ratings agency Fitch Ratings…
[Via: Reuters]