Chang Xiaobing, chairman and CEO of China Unicom, opened yesterday morning’s keynote session with a strong focus on its HSPA network deployment plans that look set to include a future move to even faster HSPA+ technology. The operator – which received a Chinese 3G license based on WCDMA last month following the sale of its CDMA network to rival China Telecom – plans to launch services from May 1 and have 248 cities covered by the end of the year. “By then we will have deployed 80,000 base stations that will cover 70 percent of the Chinese population,” commented Chairman Chang.

“We’ve made a lot of headway and it will be a reality soon,” he added. “We have chosen HSPA, and by developing the technology I believe in future we will apply HSPA+. We will also offer fixed and mobile broadband, but HSPA is our first goal.” Chairman Chang admitted that the operator has some challenges to overcome. “We need to learn from other operators, to understand how WCDMA services and technology are used and tapped into.”