China has confirmed it will award 3G licenses to the country’s three mobile operators early next year, reports the Financial Times. In a widely expected move, Li Yizhong, China’s minister for Industry and Information Technology, confirmed that market-leader China Mobile will receive a license based on TD-SCDMA, the country’s homegrown 3G standard, second-placed China Unicom will receive a WCDMA license, and new mobile player China Telecom will be given a 3G license using CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology. Li said the license awards will generate CNY200 billion (US$29.2 billion) in investments from the three operators. “This is also very significant for responding to the financial crisis, for stimulating the economy through investment,” he added. Other reports – including Dow Jones Newswires and Reuters – maintain the license awards could still yet happen by the end of this year.

Li said that the three operators must reach an agreement on infrastructure sharing before the awards are handed out. According to the FT, China is likely to use the network-sharing policy to enforce so-called ‘asymmetric regulation’ designed to allow China Unicom and China Telecom to compete more effectively with China Mobile, which currently controls around 70 percent of the market. According to the FT – which cites figures from BDA China, a telecoms consultancy – the three operators have budgeted CNY297 billion (US$43.4 billion) in 3G-related capex over the next three years. The report noted that China Mobile was set to account for the biggest share of total investments with local equipment vendors such as Huawei and ZTE likely to secure the majority of the contracts. “Non-Chinese vendors such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) face a tough fight for the remaining share of 3G capex, which BDA expects will collectively amount to less than 50 percent of the total market,” BDA chairman Duncan Clark told the FT.