On February 5, 20 16, China Unicom's LTE FDD procurement project with a scale of nearly 470,000 base stations and an amount of 24 billion yuan finally started bidding. A person familiar with a telecom equipment manufacturer revealed that the bidding project was launched on the eve of the Spring Festival. "The scale of this centralized procurement is particularly large. We have been preparing for bidding since the day before New Year's Eve." When interviewed by reporters, this person was participating in the auction.
According to public information, China Unicom issued a tender notice for centralized procurement of wireless main equipment for LTE FDD Phase III project in its procurement official website on February 5 this year. The announcement pointed out that the procurement scale in this period is 469,000 base stations, involving 334 cities across the country. Among them, the procurement scale of 106 bidding cities is167,000 stations, and the procurement scale of 228 expanding cities is 302,000 stations. A person familiar with the matter said: "China Unicom, which is in a worrying situation, will rely on this large-scale centralized procurement to fight back. The construction volume of this tender exceeds the total tender amount of 4G in the previous two years of China Unicom, and the estimated tender amount is about 24 billion yuan. "
In the whole year of 20 15, China Unicom experienced a large-scale decline in users 1 1 month, with the cumulative loss of mobile users12.52 million, and the user turnover rate was close to 5%. In the same period, the number of mobile and telecom users continued to grow. The indecision of 4G construction is one of the reasons why Unicom suffered from Waterloo. Now Unicom hopes to make up for it through this large-scale construction. China United Network Communications (HK) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as China Unicom) announced the monthly operating data of 2016/kloc-0. According to the announcement, China Unicom's 4G business has a good momentum of development, with a net increase of 5.265 million households and 49.4238+0.00 million users in June. As we all know, China Unicom has the fewest 4G base stations among the three major operators.
According to the reporter, by the end of 20 15, China Unicom had 420,000 4G base stations, of which about 654.38+million were built in 20 14. In 20 15, when the 4G license was officially issued, China Unicom only built more than 300,000 base stations.
In contrast, China Mobile, with strong cash flow, built 720,000 4G base stations in 2065,438+04 and added 380,000 in 2065,438+05. Even China Telecom, which is short of funds, has built more than 460,000 4G base stations in 20 14 and 20 15 years.
In fact, according to the pre-planning of 20 15, China Unicom will build about 500,000 4G base stations. A senior executive of Northern Unicom revealed: "On the one hand, due to the mistakes in 4G decision-making, China Unicom has been hesitant to build 3G and 4G, and there is no vitality of mobile and telecommunications on 4G; On the other hand, the Central Inspection Team was stationed in China Unicom. Under strict review, few senior executives in the whole group dare to make a decision on capital investment, and the construction and operation of 4G have been greatly delayed. "
In promotion, China Unicom is also deliberately avoiding 4G and sticking to the "3G/4G Convergence Strategy". In the publicity of users, Unicom's network, terminals and tariffs are deliberately blurring the difference between 3G and 4G. 4G users are not counted separately in the financial report statistics, but appear as 3G/4G users. Later, China Unicom put forward the strategy of "Mobile Broadband Integration", hoping to make up for the shortage of 4G with the advantages of WCDMA network. This is also a very helpless choice. Unicom just wants to lengthen the use time window of 3G network and reduce the financial pressure of 3G/4G dual-track operation. American operator AT & amp； This strategy T was tried once, and it also ended in failure.
The mistakes in the construction and operation of 4G led China Unicom to develop only 60 million 4G users in two years. In the same period, the number of 4G users of China Mobile has exceeded 300 million. These 4G users maintain high user stickiness, monthly ARPU value and traffic usage, and also bring high revenue to China Mobile.
2065438+In August 2005, Wang Xiaochu, the new chairman of China Unicom, took office and began to drastically transform Unicom's 4G decision, making it clear to all provinces that they would shift their investment focus to 4G and immediately stop investing in 2G and 3G networks. It can be seen from this tender for purchasing 469,000 base stations that the investment is 24 billion yuan. "Not only that, in the technology development roadmap of China Unicom, China Unicom has also introduced new technologies such as CA, VoLTE and VoWiFi, and plans to put them into trial commercial use at the end of 20 16." The above insiders introduced.
In addition, Wang Xiaochu also promoted the mutual cooperation between China Unicom and China Telecom-first, the deep sharing of 4G base station resources was initiated to make full use of the network resources of the two companies to improve 4G coverage; Later, the "Six-mode Full Netcom Terminal White Paper" was jointly released to improve the maturity of China Telecom and China Unicom's 4G terminal industry. In addition, the two operators have also launched a "package cooperation plan" in the fields of innovative business, international roaming and channel resources.
A Unicom person who participated in the formulation of the cooperation plan told reporters that in order to reach cooperation with telecom as soon as possible, Unicom also made many concessions. "While accelerating our own construction, we also hope that cooperation will land as soon as possible and narrow the growing gap with mobile." However, at present, China Mobile's 4G network coverage, users, terminals and capital scale are far ahead, and it is difficult for China Telecom and China Unicom to catch up with China Mobile in a short time.
Moreover, while China Unicom started centralized procurement, China Mobile also started the fourth centralized procurement of 4G base stations. This time, China Mobile will build another 300,000 4G base stations. According to the plan, China Mobile will have more than/kloc-0.4 million 4G base stations in 20 16 years, with more than 500 million 4G users, accounting for more than 60% of the total users.
In addition, China Mobile also announced that in 20 16, it will invest more than10 billion yuan in mobile phone subsidies, discounts, channel fees and other terminal subsidies, and jointly sign contracts with Spreadtrum, Qualcomm, MTK, Wen Tai Communication, Shenzhen Ye Hui, Shanghai Hua Qin and other 19 ODM manufacturers. The CA public version project plans to quickly reduce the price of VoLTE mobile phone from the current 1599 yuan to 399 yuan.
The rapid decline in the price of 4G mobile phones can push users with low spending power to switch from 2G networks to 4G. By the end of 20 15, the total number of 4G users in China was 386 million, while the total number of 2G users exceeded 500 million. It can be predicted that the key to the 4G war among the three major operators lies in who can attract more 2G users to switch to 4G networks.
According to the reporter's understanding, China Mobile will launch the plan of 2G users quitting the network on 20 17. By then, most users of China Mobile have switched to 4G networks. A mobile person revealed: "With the decrease of 2G users and network usage, a lot of frequency resources will be freed up and can be re-planned for 4G use." In the network planning of China Unicom (4. 15, 0. 140, 3.49%), 2G's network withdrawal will also start on 20 18.
Similar to China Mobile's terminal subsidy policy, China Unicom plans to invest 55 billion yuan to subsidize 4G in 20 16, and China Telecom plans to invest 7 billion yuan to subsidize the terminal industry. All three operators hope to realize the rapid popularization of 4G networks through huge financial subsidies.
However, a number of equipment vendors revealed: "It is obvious that China Unicom is under great financial pressure. In this bidding process, the proportion of business targets reached 60%, and technology and service targets accounted for 20% respectively. " A high proportion of commercial bids means that the lowest bidder will get the highest share. Prior to this, the proportion of business targets in the bidding process of operators was basically maintained at around 50%. Unicom's intention to increase the proportion of commercial bids this time is obviously to ease the financial pressure by encouraging price competition.