China Mobile to open 4G to virtual operators

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Xu Gang, vice president of China Mobile's marketing department, recently revealed that as China Mobile's 4G network coverage becomes increasingly complete, the 4G network resale business will be opened to virtual operator companies.

Prior to this, virtual operator companies cooperating with China Unicom and China Telecom have launched trial commercial services for 170 cards, and China Mobile has also been criticized by the outside world for its "non-proactive attitude."

Xu Gang revealed that China Mobile has reached cooperation with 17 virtual operators and will implement the resale of China Mobile's 170-number card in August at the earliest. Specifically, China Mobile plans to complete system preparation in June, enable some resale companies to first release numbers, meet the virtual operator's ability to rent BOSS to release numbers before August, and provide virtual operator companies with the ability to connect to BOSS to release numbers in October.

What is noteworthy is that Xu Gang said that as of June this year, China Mobile has deployed more than 260,000 4G base stations, covering more than 250 cities. It is expected that 500,000 base stations will be built by the end of the year, covering 344 cities. With the increasingly improved 4G network coverage, China Mobile's open network covers all 2G\3G\4G networks.

In contrast, China Unicom and China Telecom currently provide 3G networks for virtual operators. China Unicom currently provides users with 3G/4G unified packages, but according to its published data, it plans to build about 20,000 new 4G base stations this year. According to this calculation, it can only cover a few first- and second-tier cities.