China Unicom: from GSM to WCDMA
As China’s telecoms industry is marching from 2G to 3G, China Unicom Limited, one of the country’s biggest telecoms operators, is expected to improve its 2G network GSM into the 3G WCDMA network.
By far, the global GSM network has lured 2.88 billion users, citing the GSM Association, and the number of such users is increasing by about 1.2 million year on year. And most of the world’s GSM operators choose to upgrade their GSM network into WCDMA network, in their parade to 3G.
By the end of March 2008, there had been 211 commercial WCDMA networks in the world, including 185 with the HSDPA technology and 34 with HSUPA technology. And the HSPA users had reached 7.25 million by then.
A survey said that WCDMA has become the world’s biggest and most mature 3G network, so the terminals of it are relatively cheap. And foreign WCDMA operators have left many heritages for their Chinese peers, especially in network building technology.
The separation of the remote radio head (RRH) units and baseband units can facilitate operators to establish their WCDMA networks in a more flexible way, integrate their facilities more compact, and set up a large number of standardized, modularized and diversified base stations at lower costs. What is more, other technologies like the IP mixed-transmission and software defined radio (SDR), have been widely applied on WCDMA networks.
Besides, throughout the their WCDMA operation, foreign telecoms companies has developed many new services, including mobile music, TV, advertisement, search and instant messaging as well as mobile phone location.
Presently, voice service is still the main business in the Chinese telecoms industry. And it seems that besides short massage, coloring ring back tone (CRBT) and multimedia messaging service, other value-added service (MMS) have not been popular among the Chinese. So it is still not clear what services the China Unicom WCDMA network would be focused on and how the company would achieve profit from the services.
In addition, the problems like network quality and the relationship among its other networks are there for China Unicom to solve.
In a time of telecoms revolution, there are three most important jobs for Chinese operators to do, said a senior executive of ZTE Corporation, to balance between 2G and 3G businesses, to build 3G networks of low TOC in a short period, and to enhance their mobile data services.
Not long ago, China Unicom decided to move 50% of the staff in its CDMA operating subsidiary named Unicom Vsens Telecommunications Technology Co., Ltd. to China Telecom Corporation Limited, as part of a far-reaching assets regroupment in the Chinese telecoms industry, citing another report.
Tags: 3G, China-Unicom, GSM, WCDMA, ZTE