China Mobile Plans $8.6 Billion 3G CAPEX in 2009

China Mobile says that it plans to spend around US$8.6 billion during 2009 alone on rolling out its 3G network - based on the home-grown TD-SCDMA technology. The company aims to deploy some 60,000 base stations in 238 cities this year.

The move will be welcome news for the network infrastructure vendors who are facing a likely reduction in tenders due to the general economic malaise in their main markets.

In a recent announcement, it was confirmed that the Hong Kong listed, China Mobile Ltd agreed to lease the TD-SCDMA network being built by its parent company, China Mobile Communications (CMCC) and will pay a maximum of RMB1 billion (US$146 million) during 2009.

The company already has some 20,000 base stations as part of its early trial network, costing around US$2 billion - which gave it a slight market lead over its rival operators, China Unicom and China Telecom. However, those two networks will use the more widely available WCDMA and CDMA based technologies which is expected to enable them to offer a wider range of handsets and buy lower cost network infrastructure.

China's CCID Consulting issued a report earlier this year which predicted that the country would have 51 million TD-CDMA subscribers by 2011. CCID Consulting forecast that after an introduction period of deployment in 2008, TD-SCDMA will enter a peak period of deployment between 2009 and 2011.

The Chinese government recently said that it anticipates that the three mobile networks will spend in aggregate, some US$41 billion on their 3G networks - with at least US$29 billion being spent within the next twelve months.

The country ended last November with 634 million mobile phone users.

Posted to the site on 12th January 2009