China Telecom’s tender for CDMA network equipment for over 300 cities – thought to be worth around RMB15 billion (US$2.19 billion) – has been finalised, with domestic vendors Huawei and ZTE the major winners, reports Interfax-China. Both equipment-makers have reportedly each won 25 percent of the contract, with the remaining 50 percent split between Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, Nortel Networks and Samsung.

Earlier this month China Telecom completed the RMB43.8 billion (US$6.4 billion) purchase of China Unicom’s CDMA network, a move that was part of the country’s industry restructuring. In July, China Telecom announced it plans to spend RMB80 billion (US$11.7 billion) over the next three years in upgrading the network. The operator is planning to commercially launch the network in February next year and is aiming to more than double the number of subscribers currently on the network to around 100 million by 2010.