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"This just in: don't believe anything you hear regarding an official 3G rollout date in China. After quite a bit of rigmarole, the Chinese government has finally announced that it will issue a trio of 3G licenses. Notably, the announcement comes with a bit of baggage -- it's also calling for a merger between China Unicom and Netcom, two of its four biggest telecommunications providers. Furthermore, it stated that it would call on China Telecom, the nation's largest fixed-line carrier, to \"purchase Unicom's CDMA network,\" all leading to a massive shuffle that should position three of the nation's telecom juggernauts to eventually offer high-speed wireless to a staggering 1.3 billion people. Unfortunately (though not unexpectedly), there's no time frame given for implementation, but some analysts are asserting that \"a full launch of 3G services is [still] years away.\" Baby steps are better than no steps, we reckon.  [Thanks, James]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/25/china-to-issue-3g-licenses-calls-for-unicom-netcom-merger/>