China to issue three 3G licences

Shanghai: China will issue three licences for third-generation mobile services and called for a merger of China Unicom and Netcom, two of its four biggest telecom providers.

The government said it would also call on China Telecom, the country's biggest fixed-line telecoms carrier, to purchase wireless telecom company Unicom's CDMA network, fleshing out details of the restructuring following an initial announcement on Friday.

ABN Amro has valued the Unicom network at HK$40 billion ($5.1 billion).

China's 1.3 billion people can now look forward to joining others in advanced economies who already enjoy blazing-fast internet access, games and a host of multimedia content from maps to music.