New Unicom to Continue PHS Development
Sohu IT, 10/17/08
During a recent interview with CCTV, China's national broadcaster, executives with China Unicom (NYSE: CHU; 0762.HK; 600050.SH) expressed that the company will continue its PHS network optimization projects and new PHS product development.
He Tingrun at the National Research Institute of Radio Spectrum Management has stated that because of GSM resource constraints, the new China Unicom's GSM network is unable to accommodate the entire body of former Netcom PHS phone subscribers. This means that at the current time, it is not desirable for the new China Unicom to retire Netcom's PHS network.
Editor's Note: The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), in order to free up resources in the 1900-1920 MHz band for TD-SCDMA development, earlier asked China Telecom and China Netcom to migrate PHS users to their mobile platforms. For more background, please see "China Mobile Given Priority on Spectrum Allocation", MD 10/09/08 issue. As of the end of September 2008, Netcom had just under 25 mln PHS subscribers, while China Unicom had almost 131 mln GSM subscribers.
Keywords: National Research Institute of Radio Spectrum Management 0762.HK 600050.SH China Mobile China Netcom China Telecom China Unicom CHU GSM He Tingrun MIIT PHS spectrum TD-SCDMA users wireless 3G PHS subscribers mobile subscribers statistics