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Telcos to boost spending by 18%

(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2007-04-17 15:14

China's telecommunications carriers are expected to spend 18 percent moreyear on yearin 2007 not only on building the next-generation network but also on upgrading the existing networks, Analysys International said in a report yesterday.

China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom andChina Netcomare likely to spend a total of 245.64 billion yuan (US$31.90 billion) on capital expenditure this year, a jump of 9.7 percent year on year, said Analysys, aBeijing-based consulting firm.

"It is the first surge in CAPEX spending in the past three years, with China Mobile likely to spend 20 billion yuan on the TD-SCDMA (3G technology)," Analysys said in the report. "The annual CAPEX was around 200 billion yuan from 2004 to 2006."

China Mobile has invested about 25 billion yuan to set up third generation, the so-called 3G, networks in several cities including Beijing andShanghai, based on the home-grown time division-synchronous code division multiple access technology.

China Telecom and China Netcom have also started building networks in Baoding inHebeiProvince and Qingdao inShandongProvince.

But the operators are not likely to invest the major bulk of their funds into 3G which can't give them a huge income in the short term, industry insiders said.