After China Mobile first opened 4G to virtual operators, informed resources revealed that, China Telecom and China Unicom have said to virtual operators that they would open 4G business to virtual operators after formally getting FDD LTE licenses.
China Mobile conducted in cooperation with virtual operators lag behind, and haven’t started to open business yet, but as reported, China Mobile are jointly making 4G trials with virtual operators, namely China Mobile started to provide 4G resources to virtual operators in the very beginning and it uses the 1705 mobile phone number section.
1700 is the section that China Telecom cooperated with virtual operators, well 1709 is of China Unicom and virtual operators. It is reported that by the end of October, subscribers of mobile resale services of China Unicom has reached 550,000, covering 28 provinces in the pilot areas nationwide, the subscribers are most concentrated in developed regions (Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang). The detailed number of subscribers of China Telecom mobile resale services is unknown, but it is said to be less than that of China Unicom.
The industry has always thought that the development of subscribers is not good since commercialization of virtual operators, one of the reasons is that the three major operators didn’t open 4G business, while the wholesale price of 3G is higher than the retail price, but China Telecom and China Unicom have promised to the virtual operators, when they fully obtained the 4G capability, namely after getting the FDD LTE licenses officially, they will completely open 4G to the virtual operators, probably because China Telecom and China Unicom are still in the initial stage of their own 4G development, and the signals are not always stable, coupled with a only 40 cities in 4G integration of networking, it’s not convenient to open 4G business to virtual operators at present.