Competition the in southern Guangdong Province in China is about to grow even more intense as Guangdong Unicom prepares to launch commercial CDMA services on 8 April 2002, after the network entered trial service earlier in January.
Guangdong Unicom will market the CDMA service to customers wanting both mobile voice and data services. The existing GSM service will be targeted at medium and low use customers interested mainly in mobile voice services. Guangdong Unicom's CDMA network has been configured to cover 85% of the province's 68 million population. In the Pearl River Delta area CDMA coverage is the same as provided by Unicom's GSM network?
Three vendors - Lucent, Motorola and ZTE Corporation, were awarded contracts to supply install the 1.8 million subscriber capacity Phase 1 CDMA network and installation was completed in December 2001. Guangdong Unicom says it chose three vendors to ensure a high level of competition for equipment contracts. ZTE was chosen as the company is a local firm based in Shenzhen and offered a low price. Lucent was selected as the largest CDMA supplier in the USA, while Motorola was selected as the established supplier of GSM infrastructure to Guangdong Unicom.
Infrastructure suppliers asked to 'lend' Phase 2 kit
Lucent is believed to have supplied 7 MSCs, 900 base stations and sufficient channels to support 900,000 subscribers. Lucent's equipment provides CDMA network coverage in the Pearl River Delta area. The company has re-used a small trial CDMA system originally installed in Guangzhou and Panyu for Guangdong Great Wall.
Motorola supplied 450 base stations and channels to support 600,000 subscribers. The 7 MSCs ordered as part of the Motorola contract were supplied by Shanghai Bell. Motorola equipment provides coverage in Shenzhen, Dongguan and Huizhou and includes about 100 base stations previously installed for Guangdong Great Wall in Shenzhen, Dongguan and Huizhou, but which never entered commercial service. Motorola also installed base stations in Shantou for Great Wall. These have been removed and redeployed in the current service area.
ZTE supplied 5 MSCs, 300 base stations and radio channels to support 300,000 subscribers. The ZTE equipment coverage includes Shantou, Meizhou, Shaoguan and Zhaoqing.
According to equipment suppliers, before the Phase 1 deployment of the CDMA network was completed the China Unicom Beijing head office asked infrastructure suppliers to lend equipment due to be ordered in the Phase 2 expansion programme to several Unicom branches including Guangdong Unicom after initial CDMA network coverage was found to be insufficient in several provinces to compete with China Mobile's GSM network.
Unicom requested an equipment loan to launch Phase 2 as the operator already had spent its 2001 budget allocation rolling out CDMA Phase 1. Equipment vendors supplying Guangdong Unicom are thought to have supplied additional base stations in proportion to their original contracts. The number of base stations in service in Guangdong is expected to reach 2,600 by 8 April 2002, ready for the launch of commercial CDMA services while the network capacity is being increased slightly to support 2 million subscribers.
Phase 2 - ready by 'end Q3 2002'
Phase 2 is expected to be completed by the end of Q3 2002 and will include upgrading the CDMA network to cdma2000 1x. Equipment suppliers are eventually expected to supply the same amount of equipment for Phase 2 as for Phase 1.
Unicom targeting 1 million subs in 2002
Guangdong Unicom expects over 1 million subscribers to register for the CDMA service in 2002. More than three million customers are planned to use the CDMA service by the end of 2003. By the end of 2003 the Guangdong Unicom CDMA network is intended to be capable of supporting 5 million subscribers.
The trial of the CDMA network in January 2002 has been organised with friendly users trial. An estimated 20,000 friendly users were estimated to be connected to the CDMA network by mid-March as promotional efforts were stepped up ready for the launch of commercial services in April.
