China Unicom `Hopes’ to Get 3G License By Year-End
China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd., the country’s second-biggest mobile-phone carrier, “hopes” to gain a license for faster wireless services by year-end, Chairman Chang Xiaobing said.
The government will accelerate the process of awarding the licenses as spending on the construction of third-generation mobile-phone networks will boost the economy, Chang said at the Mobile Asia Congress conference in Macau today.
China is reorganizing its phone industry and plans to grant three 3G licenses to domestic carriers thereafter, a plan that Morgan Stanley said may be delayed to next year. Unicom plans to invest 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) in 2009 and 2010 to expand networks and offer 3G services to challenge market leader China Mobile Ltd.
The government revamp of the telecommunications industry is “largely completed,” Chang said.
Under the industry reorganization plan, Beijing-based China Unicom acquired China Netcom Group Corp. last month in a stock- only transaction, after selling the smaller of its two mobile- phone units to China Telecom Corp.
China United Telecommunications Corp. and China Network Communications Group Corp., Unicom’s two biggest shareholders, plan to combine by January, the latest of the transactions under the reorganization.
Unicom may start 3G services as early as the third quarter next year if licenses are issued by the end of 2008, Chang said in August.
The government may push back the issuance of 3G licenses to the first half of 2009 to allow more time for the development of a home-grown wireless technology, Yvonne Chow, a Morgan Stanley analyst in Hong Kong, wrote in an Oct. 2 report.
Tags: 3G, China-Mobile, China-Netcom, China-Telecom, China-Unicom, HK
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