Two events came together on the last day of 2001 to wrap up the most chaotic year in the history of China's information technology, a year in which the main telecom network carriers took centre stage and most of the dotcoms fizzled out on the sidelines.
The two events were China Unicom launching its Generation-2.5 mobile telecommunications network and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network and China Mobile closing its 14-year-old analog mobile network, the first generation of the mainland's mobile network.
It was a year in which overseas players started making forays into the highly regulated industry, but one in which the mainland passed a milestone at the end of July by overtaking the US as global mobile phone king, with 120.6 million handsets in use. That claim to fame aroused some scepticism at the time, but no one would dare question it as the year draws to an end. Recent statistics from the Ministry of Information Industry showed that China's two mobile carriers, China Mobile and China Unicom, had 140 million mobile phone users in all by the end of November.
But it was China Unicom, the smaller of the two, which stole the show. It increased its subscriptions by more than 25 per cent, year-on-year, to more than 40 million by the end of November. It also increased revenues by more than 51 per cent during the first 11 months of the year.
China Unicom put 24 billion yuan into the first phase of its Generation-2.5 mobile network and CDMA network, with a capacity of 15.15 million users. That is expected to make it compete better with its bigger rival, China Mobile. In a counter move, China Mobile will launch its General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), a different version of the Gen-2.5 mobile network early next year.
Biggest loser