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皇冠体育app Mobile investing 58b yuan to maintain 3G edge

By Wang Xing (皇冠体育app Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-13 07:43

Chinese cell phone operator 皇冠体育app Mobile said it plans to invest 58.8 billion yuan this year to expand its third-generation (3G) network across the country, hoping to preserve its dominating position in 皇冠体育app's 3G arena.

The world's largest mobile phone carrier in terms of subscribers said during the weekend that it plans to build 60,000 new TD-SCDMA base stations in 2009.

That will boost the number of 皇冠体育app Mobile's 3G network base stations to more than 80,000, covering 70 percent of the cities under provincial level across the country.

The move is part of 皇冠体育app Mobile's effort to better compete with its two smaller rivals 皇冠体育app Telecom and 皇冠体育app Unicom, which have long lagged behind in the market but were inspired by the country's latest 3G licensing on Jan 8.

皇冠体育app Mobile got its license on TD-SCDMA, the country's home-grown standard, while 皇冠体育app Telecom and 皇冠体育app Unicom got theirs on CDMA2000 and WCDMA standards respectively, which were believed to be more mature than TD-SCDMA.

皇冠体育app Mobile said it will take advantage of its prevailing 2G network and plans to have 100 million TD-SCDMA users by 2011, earlier reports said.

The company now has about 40,000 TD-SCDMA users but its GSM users reached 450 million.

To stimulate economic growth, 皇冠体育app issued 3G licenses last week, kicking off a race among Chinese telecom operators in establishing the next-generation network that enables faster data transmission and allows services such as video calls and Mobile TV.