Motorola today announced bagging a CDMA network upgradation order from China Telecom, spreading across nine provinces in 42 cities.
As part of the deal, Motorola will provide solutions for China Telecom’s CDMA 2000 1X network and replace the older equipment at numerous cell sites. The project is to be completed by early 2009.
“The deployment of next generation CDMA technology for China Telecom is another milestone in Motorola”s long history of supporting major telecom operators in China,” said Ruey-Bin Kao, president of Motorola China. “Motorola has a very significant install base of CDMA 1X equipment that will be expanded and upgraded reinforcing our position as a leading wireless infrastructure supplier in China.”
China Telecom is China’s largest fixed service telecommunications provider, delivering telephone services to 216 million subscribers and broadband internet access to over 38 million subscribers. China Unicom is the country’s second-biggest wireless carrier, with 125 million GSM subscribers and 43 million CDMA subscribers.
Last month, however, Unicom’s CDMA operations were moved to China Telecom. Meanwhile, China Unicom has received a license from the government to offer services based on W-CDMA, the GSM/UMTS standard, making Unicom virtually 100% GSM. China Mobile, the world’s biggest carrier by market value, will receive a license to operate services based on TD-SCDMA technology, the 3G standard developed in China.
China will now have three different cellular systems; China Mobile (with TD-SCDMA), China Telecom (with CDMA) and China Unicom (with GSM).
China had 627.3 million mobile-phone users at the end of October. India is now the second largest wireless market in the world. The United States is the 3rd largest wireless market, with some 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. 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.
In other news, Alvarion, the world’s leading provider of WiMAX solutions, today announced that it was awarded a $6 million contract by ICE (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad), Costa Rica’s leading incumbent operator.
Under the terms of the agreement Alvarion will implement a turnkey project deploying its 4Motion solution with its WiMAX Forum Certified BreezeMAX 2500 platform.
