Hong Kong-listed China Unicom Limited said that it would be renamed as China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited upon effective of merger agreement with China Netcom.

However, the shortened form of the new name has not been unveiled yet. After merging with China Netcom, China Unicom will gain a third-generation mobile license, which is widely believed to be a WCDMA license.

Meanwhile, publicly-traded China Netcom Group Corporation (Hong Kong) Ltd. will delist its shares from the Hong Kong and New York bourses on October 15, 2008 because of the merger with China Unicom.

China Unicom lured 16,000 CDMA subscribers this June, a drop from 55,000 in May. As of June 30, it had had 43.169 million CDMA users, in contrast to 128 million GSM users. The mobile carrier is likely to spend as much as CNY 100 billion on its mobile businesses in the coming two years.

Source:SinoCast