China Mobile blowing $8.6B to build out 3G network
Building a wireless network is never cheap -- but when you take into account the fact that you have to cover a huge landmass that's home to well over a billion souls... well, you get the picture. China Mobile has announced that it intends to sink some 58.8 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) this year alone into building out its TD-SCDMA-based 3G network to cover 238 cities across China with roughly 60,000 base stations. In the 3G race, they'll be going up against China Unicom and China Telecom who'll be operating more world-friendly WCDMA and EV-DO networks, which raises an interesting question: will TD-SCDMA equipment be cheaper thanks to royalty loopholes, or more expensive because there's no global scale of economy?
[Via mocoNews]
