SZ firms win Unicom tender

ZTE and Huawei, two high-tech firms in Shenzhen, are among the winners of the first tender for China Unicom s CDMA mobile phone network, its backers said yesterday, which is expected to become the world s largest by the end of 2004 with 50 million subscribers.Unicom, China s second largest mobile telecommunications operator, has announced the suppliers of its 12 billion yuan (US$1.

44b) code division multiple access (CDMA) system. It is expected to reach some 15 million users during its initial rollout phase, which is already underway.The winners included three Chinese firms and seven foreign giants for foreign funded firms in China. ZTE, Huawei and Datang Telecom together won contracts worth some 20 percent of the total.

ZTE was the biggest domestic winner, clinching deals worth about one billion yuan. Huawei s 300-million-yuan contracts with Unicom were dwarfed by those of ZTE, which has devoted lots of resources in developing CDMA exchangers and base stations long before the future of CDMA became clear.Spokesmen for the suppliers yesterday in Hong Kong pledged their commitment to expanding the network, which will rival the current GSM (global service for mobile communications) system already in place throughout China.

We will have 50 million users within three years, making us probably the world s largest (CDMA) carrier, said Simon Leung, corporate vice president of Motorola, one of the suppliers.China now has more than 100 million mobile phone users.