China Telecom to pay $8.6bn for CDMA
29 July 2008
China Telecom will pay as much as US$8.6 billion to use its parent's newly acquired wireless network for the next three years, as the country's top fixed-line carrier enters the more lucrative mobile market hoping to more than double its total subscriber numbers by 2010, Reuters reported. At the same time, China Telecom's parent plans to invest US$11.7 billion over three years expanding and upgrading its new Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network, top executives said. China Telecom and its state-run parent agreed in June to split the cost of taking over Unicom's underperforming CDMA operation. China Telecom aims to launch its own CDMA mobile business by the end of February, Chairman and CEO Wang Xiaochu said, debuting in a market dominated by China Mobile and smaller rival China Unicom and targeting high-end urban users.