In good news for lots of iPhone, iPad, and Android users, China Unicom (NYSE:CHU; HKG:0762) – the country’s second-largest mobile telco – will be rolling out higher-speed HSPA+ 3G next week. The roll-out will occur on May 17th to anyone with a phone or tablet that can support that kind of speedier 3G.
Unicom’s regular WCDMA 3G network can hit 7.2Mbps – but with HSPA+ soon reaching mobile devices, more folks can get (theoretical) speeds of up to 21Mbps. The May 17th date is somewhat significant, as it’s a full year after China Unicom launched its HSPA+ coverage in 56 cities across the nation. But previously it had been available only to customers who bought a Unicom network card for attaching to laptops.
In a message sent to 3G subscribers (pictured below on my phone), China Unicom informed its customers:
Dear users: from May 17th, 2012, onwards, China Unicom’s 3G network will be faster. If you have a phone that supports HSPA+, you’ll be able to use the network when you’re in a HSPA+ supported area. Note that when the network is quicker, please pay attention to your data usage.
China Unicom currently has 48.86 million 3G subscribers in recent stats, trailing behind – but catching up with – the giant China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941).
HSPA+ is a contentious issue of late, mainly due to weasely American telcos trying to equate the term with 4G, which, in technical terms, it is not. HSPA+, according to the digital Delphi (Wikipedia), “enhances the widely used WCDMA based 3G networks with higher speeds for the end user that are comparable to the newer [4G] LTE networks.”
China Unicom was in the news back in September of last year when an executive spilled the beans on the not-yet-released new iPhone, saying that it would support HSPA+. That turned out to be true. On AT&T, users with the new iPhone 4S later saw their 3G icon turn into a ‘4G’ one once they updated to iOS 5.1. I wonder if that’ll happen for Unicom subscribers as well.
As for 4G, it is currently under testing in some major Chinese cities, as we reported earlier today.
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