China Mobile, the country's largest mobile phone operator, plans to kick off the third phase of TD-SCDMA bidding on March 16 to speed up 3G network construction, China Business News reported.

The third-phase bidding will purchase equipment for 39,000 base stations to be built in 200 cities such as Foshan, Wuxi and Wenzhou, 1.6 times the size of the second phase.

Participants this time include Datang, ZTE, Huawei, Potevio, Nokia Siemens Networks and Ericsson, the same as that of the second phase.

Currently, ZTE possesses 36 percent of the TD-SCDMA market share, ranking first, followed by Datang.

But as the third-phase bidding kicks off, such rankings will change, according to CCID Consulting, an IT consulting firm in China.

In 2009, China Mobile plans to invest 58.8 billion yuan in TD-SCDMA network construction. By the end of this year, more than 80,000 base stations will cover 70 percent of China's prefecture-level cities.

(China Daily March 11, 2009)