Following an announcement made by China's MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) in February that China's PHS (Personal Hand-phone System), commercially branded Xiaolingtong, will completely withdraw from the market by year-end 2011, China Unicom's subsidiaries in Beijing, Changchun, and Harbin, recently confirmed that they will terminate PHS services and vacate PHS spectrum by year-end 2011, the Sohu IT News reported on March 12. In addition, Hebei Unicom, the other subsidiary of China Unicom in Hebei, said that the company will shut down PHS signals by December 31, 2010, one year earlier than planned.

 

The frequency band ranging from 1880 MHz and 1930 MHz originally allocated for Xiaolingtong will be completely vacated for 3G services by year-end 2011 to ensure the PHS service will not interfere China Mobile's TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) service operating in the 1880-1900 MHz frequency band. To date, China Unicom's subsidiary in Shenyang said the number of users migrated from PHS services to GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) has reached around 50,000. Xiaolingtong closure is expected to have negative impact on profits of China Telecom and China Unicom, which are currently still running the PHS service.