Introduction
The Chinese telecommunication sector’s growth rate was about 20% between 1997 and 2002. China fixed-line and mobile operators have invested an average of 25 billion US dollars on network infrastructure in the last years, which will be more than all western European carriers combined. As a result, with 1.3 billion citizens, China owns the world’s largest fixed-line and mobile network in terms of both network capacity and number of subscribers.
Only one out of ten Chinese citizens had a phone five years ago. Today more than one out of three have a fixed telephone subscription and more than 1.25 million cellular subscribers sign up in China every week.
China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on December 11, 2001 resulted in the gradual opening of the telecom services market to foreign companies.
China’s two mobile operators, China Mobile and China Unicom, will continue to expand their mobile networks in 2005 in a way that not only increases network coverage but also gives flexibility to offer more data services to their customers. They will continue to have great demand for base stations, switches and network optimization solutions.
Read more about this topic: Telecommunications Industry In The People's Republic Of China
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