China: 10 firms win phone network contract

China Unicom yesterday signed contracts worth 12.1 billion yuan (US$1.45 billion) with companies which won bids to build its new mobile phone network, the code division multi access (CDMA) project.Following tense competition, 10 telecom firms finally signed agreements with Unicom Horizon, the subsidiary of China Unicom which is in charge of the CDMA network construction.

Four top international firms, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel and Ericsson, won large shares of the project through their Chinese joint ventures (JV), according to China Unicom.Domestic firms ZTE, Datang, Jinpeng, Eastcom, Huawei and Shanghai Bell, took the remaining contracts.Qingdao Lucent, the JV of the US-based telecom giant, won the biggest share of the work.

It will provide a network in a contract worth US$400 million.Shenzhen-based ZTE was the biggest Chinese winner with about a one-10th share of the network contract. It will construct a CDMA network in 10 provinces. The success of ZTE underlines China s technology development in CDMA technology, according to a spokesman for China Unicom.

CDMA is a mobile network which provides improved voice transmission and emits lower levels of radiation.China Unicom will become the country s only CDMA network owner. The company plans to conduct a trial operation in October and hopes to attract 15.15 million users by the end of the year.