China Unicom will this week launch its ‘Wo 4G+’ proposition, as it looks to “provide data communication services with faster speed and higher quality to fully upgrade customers’ experience anytime and anywhere”.

While the country’s number two operator provided little in the way of detail, it did state that its efforts cover five areas – network, products, terminals, channels and operation.

“As a key support for ‘WO 4G+’, the Company will focus its resources to accelerate the 4G network construction with full strength and concurrently explore the expansion of co-building and sharing of infrastructure facilities to optimise resources allocation,” it said in a statement.

Unicom also said that by quickly expanding its network coverage and quality, it aims to “establish a leading 4G premium network of the industry”.

Trailing its rivals
While market leader China Mobile has provided guidance on the size of its 4G customer base, this has not been the case for Unicom, which instead provides a “mobile broadband” figure which includes 3G subscriptions.

GSMA Intelligence calculations puts the company a long way behind its rivals for 4G. The analyst firm estimates that China Unicom has 11 million 4G connections, compared to 44 million for China Telecom and a huge 248 million for China Mobile.

China Unicom and smaller rival China Telecom have both opted to use the FDD version of LTE, which is most popular internationally, as their primary 4G technology of choice, while China Mobile is a staunch proponent of TD-LTE.

Due to a mix of licensing and technology issues, this gave the market leader something of a head-start, with its rivals now working quickly to catch up.