China to issue 3G licenses, calls for Unicom / Netcom merger

This just in: don't believe anything you hear regarding an official 3G rollout date in China. After quite a bit of rigmarole, the Chinese government has finally announced that it will issue a trio of 3G licenses. Notably, the announcement comes with a bit of baggage -- it's also calling for a merger between China Unicom and Netcom, two of its four biggest telecommunications providers. Furthermore, it stated that it would call on China Telecom, the nation's largest fixed-line carrier, to "purchase Unicom's CDMA network," all leading to a massive shuffle that should position three of the nation's telecom juggernauts to eventually offer high-speed wireless to a staggering 1.3 billion people. Unfortunately (though not unexpectedly), there's no time frame given for implementation, but some analysts are asserting that "a full launch of 3G services is [still] years away." Baby steps are better than no steps, we reckon.

[Thanks, James]

[Oliver @ May 25th 2008 6:55AM]

wait. So china doesn't have 3g? That sucks. I feel sorry for them. Perhaps that's why it wouldn't be a great idea to release products like iPhone 2.

[tekdroid @ May 25th 2008 7:01AM]

Chinese factory workers making the 3G iPhone were overheard saying "3G. If only we had 3G...sigh"

[Adam Ko @ May 25th 2008 8:12AM]

I'm from China and I know the current EDGE service in China is way more expensive than most of the countries in the world... I wonder what the price tag would look like when HSDPA finally goes public...

[Steffen Jobbs @ May 25th 2008 7:51AM]

Why do they need 3G? It's not like they unable to make telephone calls with their present handsets. I thought the U.S. didn't even have complete coverage using 3G. China has more important things to concern themselves with other than 3G. By the time they get 3G implemented throughout China, maybe a lot of countries will have already started moving to 4G.

[wind1084 @ May 25th 2008 8:23AM]

I am a Chinses. Why China doesn't have 3G now? Cos the government doesn't want to use WCDMA or CDMA2000 which are the foriegn standards. They want to use the TD-SCDMA which is the Chinese standard for 3G most likely based on the political or military concern.

[Adam Ko @ May 25th 2008 8:46AM]

Nope... TD-SCDMA is being pursued by China in an attempt not to be "dependent on Western technology".

[Jeremy Clarkson @ May 25th 2008 8:47AM]

totally wrong, chinese government want to use TD-SCDMA to compete with other standers, but government never force you to use that. you still can choose Unicom forthcoming WCDMA network

[Jamar @ May 25th 2008 10:00AM]

Which I plan to. And Unicom will get more customers for doing so- lots of people in China have imported Japanese phones with WCDMA. Nothing with TD-SCDMA can compare to what's coming out of Japan right now.

[Sean @ May 25th 2008 10:21AM]

so you are a Chinese, but you don't know China is going to have all 3 of them?

[Sean @ May 25th 2008 10:32AM]

Jamar
i would say nothing in the world can compare to what's coming out of Japan.

[Adam Ko @ May 25th 2008 8:59AM]

Just... out of curiosity why you westerners are so concerned about 3G networks in China and you guys are not actually going to use it.

[Yojimbo @ May 25th 2008 9:30AM]

Adam Ko - Some of us Westerners travel to China on a regular basis.

[Adam Ko @ May 25th 2008 10:13AM]

Now I see.

[nDee @ May 25th 2008 12:56PM]

at least you get GSM 900 for voice calls, unless you're an american using a 1900/850 dualband phone.

[Jamar @ May 25th 2008 9:49AM]

Please. This has been floating around cellphone message boards (Blueshow, etc) for a while now. Although the rumors give a much more "timely" timeframe (done before/during/immediately after the Olympics)...

@Adam Ko- Um, where do you live? I know that China Mobile charges differently in different places- here in Shanghai it's pretty darn cheap (I never find myself paying more than 20RMB/month for daily browsing and a few Youtube videos).

[Adam Ko @ May 25th 2008 10:53AM]

I'm currently living in Shenzhen and soon I'll be studying in London.

In Guangdong Province China Mobile used to have a special offer costing only 5 yuan per month - 100MB of free WAP access included. Now it's gone.

Some of the people in China does not aware of the high costs behind wrong network configurations on their mobile devices or excessive network usage - the consequence is utterly obvious, at the end of the month thousands of Yuan could be spent for nothing.

[Michael @ May 26th 2008 3:47AM]

Peking China Mobile GPRS:

5RMB for 10Mb/Month
20RMB for 50Mb/Month
100RMB for 800Mb/Month
200RMB for 2000Mb/Month

all up to 500RMB/Month for unlimited data, but international data not included. I don't know what international data is, is that mean that I have to surf within the China big LAN?

[NineT9 @ May 25th 2008 11:18AM]

EBOX, XBOX, whats next iBOX from Apple?

[NineT9 @ May 25th 2008 11:19AM]

oops replied to wrong page haaaa

[Qugeist @ May 25th 2008 3:10PM]

現在只等大陸、港澳台出iPhone了，亞洲好像沒幾個國家賣蘋果手機。台灣已有3G了、但還沒消息要在台開賣。。。不過那個繁體手寫輸入應該暗示會在亞洲市場上市，可是也還沒有日文輸入。。。 喔，有夠離題。

[Bubuyu @ May 26th 2008 6:34AM]

China Mobile - TD-SCDMA
China Unicom - WCDMA
China Telecom - CDMA 2000

[jschl1981 @ May 27th 2008 7:53AM]

Currently 3G is an expensive investment but has few money-making applications. This is why the chinese government prefer to issue 3G licences lately. Notel has sold its 3G division to Alcatel-Lucent, because 3G never earn any money for it. Alcatel-Lucent sucks in 3G and it never earned any money from it. Many european mobile operators suffered heavily from 3G investement, like France Telecom etc. Heavy lost in 3G was the main reason of telecom crise in 2003. 3G sucks!!!! So why should China spent money on a technology that is doomed ??? Even iphone does not support UMTS.