China Mobile to Invest $8.6 Billion in 3G This Year

China's largest telecom operator, China Mobile, announced recently that it planned on investing around 8.6 billion dollars this year in the development of the third-generation network. As already reported last week, the company was granted a license for the Chinese-developed TD-SCDMA standard for 3G. The carrier said that it intended to use the money for the deployment of around 60,000 base stations that would cover 238 cities.

Currently, China Mobile operates over 20,000 base stations around the country, used to connect calls between mobile phones, the company states. The Chinese government was reported last week to have finally awarded third-generation network licenses, so the 3G telecoms can now take off in the country. Reportedly, the new standards are able to offer faster data transmission and services including wide-area wireless calls, web surfing and video.

Besides China Mobile, China Unicom was also granted a 3G license for Europe's WCDMA standard. At the same time, China Telecom was announced to have received license for North America's CDMA 2000. The 3G license China Mobile was granted is for Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access, a Chinese-developed 3G standard.

According to a governmental statement issued last month, the country's carriers are expected to invest around 41 billion dollars in the third-generation networks in the course of the following two years. Around 29 billion dollars are expected to be spent this year. In addition, the launch of the 3G network is expected to become a means of counterbalancing the effects of the global economic slowdown.

We should also note that China is considered the biggest mobile phone market in the world, as it had over 634 million subscribers by the end of November. The country currently has only three large mobile phone service providers, as China Network Communications Group Corp was recently acquired by China Unicom.