As of the end of last month, China had 714,000 3G base stations, of which 214,000 were built and run by China Mobile, 226,000 by China Telecom and 274,000 by China Unicom, according to a report released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) on Monday.
The 3G network of China Mobile covered four municipalities, 653 cities, 1,607 counties and some developed towns on the Chinese mainland; that of China Telecom covered around 660 cities, over 2,000 counties and 29,000 towns; while China Unicom’s 3G network was shown to cover 341 cities and 1,917 counties.
The Chinese mainland had 73.76 million 3G subscribers by the end of May, up 6.17 million month-on-month.
Of these subscribers, China Mobile served 32 million, accounting for 43 percent; China Telecom 19.67 million, accounting for 27 percent; and China Unicom 22.09 million, making up 30 percent.
Ye Lin, an official from the science and technology department of MIIT, told Xinhua previously that, as of the beginning of June, 289 billion yuan ($44.62 billion) had been invested in expanding and promoting 3G networks, of which 141.9 billion yuan was from China Mobile, 79.8 billion yuan from China Telecom and 67.3 billion yuan from China Unicom.
An earlier report from MIIT showed that the call completion rate of the three operators was above 97.6 percent on average as of the end of April this year. Their call dropping rate was recorded as below 0.47 percent.
Global Times