The general manager of China Unicom's Sales & Marketing Department Xiong Yu said in an interview, as China Unicom has been approved in developing FDD-LTE and TD-LTE hybrid integration of networking in 16 cities in the end of June, the development of bi-4G network of China Unicom has come into scale development. From a global perspective, China Unicom has mastered the FDD and WCDMA models, which are most extensively used internationally, after the effective supplement with the TD-LTE network, China Unicom will create a 42M+100M+150M network for domestic subscribers, achieving the user experience of "double 4G, double 100Mbps broadband".
Although the 4G licenses for TD-LTE were released last year, but only China Mobile spare no pains in this network mode. Before the approbation of FDD-LTE pre-commercial services in 16 cities, China Unicom has sold only 600,000-700,000 4G devices in the first half of this year, and most of the new subscribers during the same period are still 3G subscribers.
"China is a developing country, there’s a big difference between the urban and rural region. After the release of 4G licenses, China Unicom will adopt a two-wheel drive strategy, with the emphasis on 4G in the high-end subscribers and 3G in the low-end. What’s more, the WCDMA HSPA+42Mbps network coverage of China Unicom could be regarded as the best network coverage in China. Therefore, on the basis of wide coverage, China Unicom believes there is a very big market in the low-end subscribers."
"Second, the present penetration rate of 3G smartphones is about 35-40%, which should have entered into the explosive stage of smartphones. The main subscribers in this stage are of low-end, so that China Unicom believes the market space is very big in the low-end customers." Xiong Yu believes, there is still formally very large development space in 3G, and the development of 4G is not as fast as many insiders have expected.
Because of the influence of policies such as “replacement of business tax with value-added tax”, China Mobile has stopped subsidies for 3G devices, how to make subsidies is an equal challenge for all the three major operators. "China Unicom's strategy is the integration of 3G/4G, while make no different strategies between the 3G or 4G devices, China Unicom will make a unified deployment based on the user's value." Xiong Yu said.