China Unicom, the country's second largest mobile phone operator, is taking advantage of its nationwide CDMA 1X network to roll out value-added telecoms services to grab a larger domestic market share.

"We've almost upgraded all our CDMA network from 2G to 2.75G now," said Lu Jianguo, vice-president of China Unicom.

Regarded as 2.75G, the CDMA 1X network has a highest transmission rate of 153.6 kilobytes per second (kbps).

"Transferring our technology and business advantages into market share is our major task," Lu said.

He said the company is now cooperating with more than 600 content providers to provide varied value-added telecoms services.

"In the next few months, we are going to introduce value-added services for daily life, commerce and entertainment such as streaming media and video handsets," said Zhai Yibing, deputy general manager of China Unicom's value-added service department.

Value-added services initiated by China Unicom include video and photo e-mail, location-based services and fast wireless Internet access.

Currently, China Unicom has more than 6 million registered subscribers who are using the value-added telecom services based on the CDMA 1X network.

In August alone, revenue from the value-added services took in 600 million yuan (US$72.2 million).

"More value-added services can actually help us nurture the market for the upcoming 3G," Lu said.

CDMA 1X is, in fact, regarded as 3G technology by the International Telecom Union.

With a total investment of 68 billion yuan (US$8.1 billion) in the past three years, the CDMA network now has the total capacity to provide service to 52 million subscribers.

"The figure is likely to surpass 70 million when we finish further upgrading of the network at the end of this year," Lu said.

While talking about dual-mode phones, officially unveiled early last month, Lu said: "We see a surging demand as the market is short of supply now."

Under the brand name of "World Wind," the dual-mode mobile phone service supporting both GSM and CDMA networks enables users to transfer between both networks automatically.

China Unicom is the only telecom operator that runs the two different networks.

According to Tan Xinghui, general manager of China Unicom's marketing and sales department, more than 50,000 dual-mode sets have been sold since early last month.

In another development, Tan said that the company is to purchase a million CDMA phones in the second half of the year to meet market demand.

(China Daily September 20, 2004)