THE Shanghai telephone authorities are expanding their mobile phone network by placing a major order with Motorola, the US electronics group, to expand the capacity to more than 40,000 subscribers.
Motorola said yesterday the contract, for an unstated amount and paid in hard currency, was the largest cellular order it had received from China.
Mr Richard Sell, director of operations for Motorola's north Asia cellular infrastructure division, said the equipment was ''state of the art''.
''It's not a second-class system by any means,'' he said, adding that the EMX2500 equipment being supplied was the most advanced analogue equipment the company sold.
The contract with the Shanghai Post and Telecommunication Administration is for fixed network equipment, and not for handsets, which can be bought from a number of manufacturers including Motorola.
Mr Sells, recently in Shanghai, said mobile phones had still to become the mass-market product they were in Hongkong, and were still largely used only by senior business people, although he expected this to change.
