About 1,400 next-generation mobile, or 3G, base stations will be constructed in Shanghai and Beijing by the end of this year. Chinese firms ZTE Corp and Datang Mobile, with their foreign partners, won the bid from China Mobile, Shanghai Daily learned yesterday.

The companies will build 400 to 500 outdoor base stations and 800 to 900 indoor stations to cover each city, with each costing 50,000 yuan (US$6,493) on average, Chen Haofei, secretary general of TD-SCDMA Forum, told Shanghai Daily in a phone interview yesterday.

"The TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access) networks will cover the whole cities for the coming Olympic Games, therefore China Mobile focuses more on the full coverage rather than short-term profitability," said Chen at the TD-SCDMA Forum, which has 420 members including ZTE, China Mobile, China Telecom and Datang Mobile.

Shenzhen-based ZTE won contracts worth 3.2 billion yuan in China Mobile's equipment bid, based on the home-grown TD-SCDMA technology, along with partner Ericsson's 260 million yuan. Datang Mobile and Alcatel Shanghai Bell (ASB) won 2.45 billion yuan, according to Chen.

ZTE will provide 3G equipment in six cities including Beijing, Tianjin and Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, Shenzhen-listed ZTE told the Shenzhen Stock Exchange yesterday, without providing specific figures.

As a joint bidder with Datang Mobile, ASB won a "significant share" of the TD-SCDMA networks in Shanghai and Guangzhou. The projects will be completed this October, according to Cao Yong, spokesperson at ASB, an Alcatel-Lucent joint venture in China.

ASB, which manufactures network equipment, has a monthly capacity of 2,000 base stations by the end of March.

Other bidders, including TD-Tech, a joint venture between Nokia Siemens Network and Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies, and China Putian, also won contracts from China Mobile.

"The success of Chinese firms will give them capital and opportunity to compete with global giants in China's 3G market," Chen Liang, Guotai Jun'an's analyst said in a recent report.

(Shanghai Daily via chinadaily.com.cn April 10, 2007)