The three state owned Chinese mobile operators, which were granted 3G licences in January, planned to make CNY 450 billion investments in 3G services in the next two and a half to three years, Minister of Industry and IT Li Yizhong said in a press conference at Beijing. Li stressed that each operator needs to develop at least 50 million 3G users, and try its best to reach 80 million in the next three years. With three 3G operators, the regulator expects to reach 240 million 3G users in three years, a target which is higher than the government’s previous goal of 150 million in three years made in February. Analysts said the 240 million users target is much more aggressive and questioned how the government would achieve this. An analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research Marvin Lo said that according to the research firm’s previous forecast, 3G penetration will reach 16 percent in 2012, based on a projection of a total number of mobile users of 938 million. Provided the 3G target reaches 240 million, the penetration will be 26 percent in 2010, Lo added. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has picked China Mobile for the commercialisation and roll-out of the TD-SCDMA technology. Li said the commercialisation of TD-SCDMA had proven successful because China Mobile took a more aggressive approach after China Telecom and Unicom launched 3G services based on mature technologies. China Mobile , which operates the home-grown TD-SCDMA 3G service, has about 1.2 million users. China Telecom Corp and China Unicom, which provide 3G services based on CDMA and WCDMA technologies respectively, did not give 3G subscriber data. At the end of June, the country had about 695 million mobile users.
Source : Telecompaper
