According to informed sources, China Unicom has begun a new round of 4G networking equipment bidding recently, and the scale was larger than usual with as many as 143 cities, covering half of the prefecture level cities.
The first batch of pilot cities of China Unicom 4G was 16 cities and the second batch was 24, before the World Internet Conference was held in Zhouzhuang of Zhejiang province, Jiaxing was added in the list of 4G pilot cities, which amounted to 41 cities in total.
Soon after that, news said that China Unicom and China Telecom have submitted the third batch of pilot cities list of TDD/FDD-LTE hybrid networking trials, which wants to add 237 cities. But judging from the range of 4G networking equipment bidding of China Unicom, it seems that the goal wasn’t achieved.
Even so, 4G has greatly expanded for China Unicom. It is reported that China Unicom will mainly focus on 4G in the mobile communication field in the next year, but its 3G will also be speeded up. China Unicom has conducted a 3G/speed-up test in Guangdong recently, it shows that the downlink rate could reach 63Mbps in 3G network, which is a 50% increase based on the existing speed, and the uplink speed rate could increase by 100%.