BEIJING—Hong Kong-listed China Mobile (HK) and its parent company China Mobile Communications expect to have a combined 100 million subscribers by year-end. China Unicom, which is also listed in Hong Kong, and its parent company China United Telecommunications count on 50 million customers.
China Unicom expects its new CDMA network to be 70 percent used in the first year of operation. It plans to lease network capacity for 9 million subscribers from its parent company, which will retain a capacity of 6.5 million as the initial total capacity of the network will be 15.5 million covering 300 cities.
The CDMA network is being built by subsidiary Unicom Horizon. According to Unicom Horizon President Wang Yingpei, the first phase of the project is scheduled to be finished by the end of October. A full-scale marketing campaign will start by the end of the year or early next year.
The China Unicom Group also expects to expand its market share in fixed-line telephony from 4 percent to 20 percent in 2005, according to Pang Yuguang, deputy general manager for planning.
