China Telecom plans to migrate its newly-acquired CDMA mobile operation to Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology within the next three years, CEO Wang Xiaochu said in a press conference yesterday, reports CommsDay. However, Xiaochu said the operator will initially focus on rolling out EV-DO Rev A technology – the CDMA equivalent of 3G – in key cities before moving to LTE “in two to three years’ time.” Xiaochu did not comment on whether this is an obligation of any future 3G license. China Telecom would potentially follow operators such as Japan’s KDDI, and Verizon Wireless and Alltel of the US, in abandoning the CDMA technology roadmap to follow LTE, part of the GSM family of technologies.

It was announced yesterday that China Telecom will acquire China Unicom’s CDMA mobile business for around US$16 billion as part of a widespread restructuring of China’s telecoms market. The deal marks China Telecom’s first entry into the mobile market. According to CommsDay, the enlarged China Telecom will have a combined (fixed-line and mobile) subscriber base of 256 million, just ahead of the newly-merged Unicom/Netcom (251.2 million) but behind China Mobile’s 369.3 million. The new China Telecom will have combined revenue of RMB178.7 billion (US$25.7 billion), Unicom/Netcom will have RMB145.3 billion and China Mobile will have RMB357 billion.