With the rapid increasing demands of number resources of the MVNOs, an informed source revealed that MIIT has officially opened the 171 number sections to MVNOs. At present, the preliminary determined number sections are of 1718/1719 with 20 million numbers in total, and all the resources are provided to China Unicom.
China Unicom has always been active in promoting the development of MVNOs. In May of this year, subscribers of its mobile resale service have exceeded 5 million, taking nearly 90% of the market shares. At present, the fastest growing MVNO Snail Mobile also rented the network of China Unicom, with over 2 million subscribers.
Industry insiders pointed out that the open of new number sections will effectively ease the constraints of number resources in MVNOs, which also reflects the government's supports for the development of MVNOs.