BEIJING-China Unicom’s aggressive promotion of its CDMA network is continuing to bear fruit. In the fortnight around China’s National Day of 1 October, the company signed 700,000 new users.
On 14 October, China United Telecommunications announced in Beijing that the number of its CDMA users broke the 4 million mark. Company President Wang Jianzhou is confident the target of 7 million users by year-end is attainable, provided the supply of handsets is assured during the next three months.
The company claimed it added on average 4,000 subscribers per day in the first half of the year, 15,000 in July, 20,000 in August and 35,000 per day in September.
Nevertheless, domestic shares of parent company China United and Hong Kong-listed shares of subsidiary China Unicom lost ground, as analysts and investors worried about the high costs of acquiring new subscribers.
Wang expects the company’s CDMA business to break even next year. The company also counted 57 million GSM subscribers.
