China Telecom has granted part of its nationwide CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) network upgrade project to Motorola, which will deploy CDMA radio access infrastructure for 42 cities across nine provinces, according to a press release by Motorola on December 15. For this network upgrade project, Motorola will employ its latest CDMA2000 1X technology and CDMA equipment. Installation is slated to begin in early 2009.

Motorola is the second overseas vendor confirmed to have obtained a portion of China Telecom's CDMA network upgrade project spanning a total of 342 cities. In early December Alcatel-Lucent revealed that it was awarded a US$230 million contract, whereby the company will provide end-to-end CDMA wireless networking solutions for China Telecom in 56 cities.