A source within China Unicom has revealed that at the earliest, the company will begin the rollout of its WCDMA network by the end of this year. Unicom is currently in the preliminary design stage for the new network, and plans to hold trial bidding for equipment in November.
Unicom headquarters has already notified all provincial departments, requiring that equipment purchases in the second half of this year support both 2G and 3G networks. This way, Unicom will be able to turn on support for 3G networks in a number of cities as soon as the company is issued a 3G license.
Editor's Note: China Unicom has reportedly already begun rolling out a trial WCDMA network in the cities of Foshan and Shenzhen, Guangdong province. For more background on this topic, please see "Unicom Starts WCDMA Trial Network Construction", MD 8/19/08 issue.
