BEIJING-Qualcomm and China Unicom will jointly launch a GSM 1x trial in China’s Suzhou in the second quarter of the year. The purpose is to enable China Unicom’s GSM subscribers to enjoy the high-speed data transmission offered by its CDMA 1x service.
If successful, the experiment will be extended to the whole country. Qualcomm claims it is the first such experiment to be conducted in the whole world.
China Unicom has around 60 million GSM subscribers and 8 million CDMA subscribers, accounting for 30 percent of the nation’s total. Qualcomm Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Irwin Jacobs is confident China Unicom will be able to add 13 million CDMA subscribers this year to reach a year-end total of 20 million.
