On 2014 annual performance press conference, general manager of China Unicom Lu Yimin said that the capital expenditure wouldn’t increase largely in this year even after the formal issuance of FDD LTE licenses, which will be controlled within CNY 100 billion. The annual goal is to achieve 920,000 base stations in total this year, accelerate the upgrade of existing 3G networks to 4G, and make the 4G coverage extended to the urban areas and rural towns.
In last year, China Unicom expected the capital expenditure as CNY 84 billion, which was CNY 84.9 billion indeed, and the mobile network capital expenditure was 36.95 billion.
Lu Yimin emphasized that the shift from 3G to 4G is not as revolutionary as from 2G to 3G, the future development strategy is to attract users by integration of 3G and 4G, while the charging policy won't appear big adjustments.
On the recent rumor of "Consolidation of China Unicom and China Telecom", the chairman of China Unicom Chang Xiaobing made a formal clarification that China Unicom did not receive external or internal requirements for consolidation, and did not conduct merge with China Telecom.
He said at the same time, the joint-stocked tower company is actively engaged in the construction, the progress isn’t slow than we have expected, and each side are working on the commercial patterns in order to achieve the purpose of saving resources by co-construction and sharing.