China is set to hand out three 3G licenses in the coming weeks, possibly before the end of this year, says Unstrung. The move is expected to kickstart a massive round of wireless infrastructure spending.
According to various reports from China, including this one from Bloomberg, Li Yizhong, China’s minister for Industry and Information Technology, told a news conference that operators were expected to spend at least 200 billion Renminbi (US$29.2 billion) in 3G-related capital expenditure next year.
- China Mobile, the world’s biggest carrier by market value, will receive a license to operate services based on TD-SCDMA technology, Li said today. The 3G standard was developed in China.
- China Unicom, the country’s second-biggest wireless carrier, will get a license to offer services based on W-CDMA, the GSM/UMTS standard. The company had 125 million GSM subscribers and 43 million CDMA subscribers. As of November the CDMA operations have been moved to China Telecom. Their UMTS system is expected to launch next year.
- China Telecom, China’s largest fixed service telecommunications provider, will receive a CDMA2000 permit. The company provides fixed-line telephone services to 216 million subscribers as of April 2008. It is buying China Unicom’s nationwide CDMA business and assets, giving it 43 million mobile subscribers.
China Telecom and China Netcom are the dominate fixed-line operators. China Mobile (GSM and TD-SCDMA) and China Unicom (now just GSM) are the dominant mobile carriers.
China’s 3G network rollouts will help boost the global telecom sector at a time when the worldwide market is set to shrink, observes Unstrung.
Telecommunications revenue in China may rise 6 percent this year, slower than the 12 percent increase in 2007, as consumers rein in spending according to Morgan Stanley analyst Yvonne Chow.
China had 627.3 million mobile-phone users at the end of October, according to government data. By contrast, the United States has 263 million mobile-phone users, according to the CTIA.
Global telecom revenue will reach $2 trillion by the end of 2008, an increase of 7.6% over telecom revenue in 2007, research firm Gartner projects.
- One of the biggest drivers for telecom growth in 2008 has been the expansion of the Asian telecom market, which Gartner says will surpass the North American market in total revenues for the first time in 2008.
- In total, the Asian telecom revenues will grow by 8% to $513 billion this year, just barely surpassing North American telecom revenues, which are projected to grow by 4.5% and to total $511.6 billion.
- Gartner expects the Middle East and Africa to be the fastest-growing regions for telecom revenues over the next four years, with a compound annual growth rate of 8.6% projected between 2007 and 2012.
- India is now the second largest wireless market in the world, topping the 258 million total wireless subscribers in the United States this Spring. China is by far the largest wireless market on the globe, with a subscriber base of over 600 million.
Gartner projects that mobile services will continue to eclipse fixed-line services and that a strong increase in mobile data services and fixed-mobile convergence services will increase customers’ need to invest in new telecom equipment.
By 2011, global telecommunications revenue is estimated to hit close to $5 trillion, with the growing demand for high-volume data applications driving both business and consumer markets.
