BEIJING-According to China Unicom President Wang Jianzhou, prices of mobile-phone equipment have dropped to such an extent that capital expenditure per subscriber has decreased 40 percent since June last year. Fast subscriber growth is also a contributing factor.
China Unicom has added 700,000 subscribers in the last two months. At the beginning of June, the company broke the 10 million subscriber mark.
China Unicom has a capital expenditure budget of CNY43.8 billion (US$5.29 billion) for this year, but it will most likely not have to spend it all. Network capacity is expected to surpass 30 million subscribers by the end of the year with 15 million to 18 million actual subscribers. By 2005, the company forecasts to have 55 million to 60 million mobile subscribers, to grab a 35-percent market share.
In other news, China Unicom selected Asian wireless Internet business services provider Asia.com to expand its Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) network and short message service (SMS) reach in China.
Asia.com said its development team will build the application platforms enabling China Unicom’s network of 20 WAP portals to deliver coverage of the 2000 Summer Olympic Games. Asia.com will also develop wireless platforms for China Unicom’s Short Message Service Center platform, expanding Olympic news coverage to an additional 14 million users.
