China Unicom and China Telecom plans to share some network resources for both fixed-line and 4G going forward, and is in discussion to jointly plan/deploy 4G base stations for radio sharing to take on the might China Mobile
Both Companies have planned to reach 0.5mn 4G BTS by end of 2015, and will probably need to deploy another 0.5mn 4G BTS by each to catch up with CM in the next 2-3 yrs if no sharing. We believe the 4G BTS sharing is very positive for CU/CT due to potential capex/opex savings. We don?t expect 4G BTS radio sharing to face any significant regulatory hurdle as Govt always encourages resource sharing and
the radio sharing is also quite popular in Europe.
