Market rivalry between China's two biggest mobile telecom carriers is heating up with China Unicom's heavy promotion of its code division multiple access (CDMA) business.

Unicom's marketing campaign started recently, inundating people with CDMA advertisements in newspapers and on radio and television.

It is widely believed that Unicom is pushing hard to reach a target of 7 million CDMA users for the year and put further pressure on its only rival, China Mobile.

Unicom Vice-President Shang Bain told China Daily that the number of new users grows by more than 20,000 each day.

He said the number of Unicom users surpassed 2 million people a fortnight ago.

If the growth continues for the rest of the year, Shang said the target of 7 million people will be reached.

A China Mobile spokesperson refused to comment about CDMA's rapid development in the country.

Under the strong market campaign, China Mobile customers are considering switching to Unicom.

In South China's Guangdong Province, the local branch of the Agricultural Bank of China gives some of its credit card users free CDMA phones, according to their credit record.

One of the strongest selling points for CDMA phones, especially for young people, is the ring tone.

Beside first-time mobile phone users, many customers are considering shifting from a global system for mobile communications (GSM) phone to CDMA.

Some customers carry two mobile phones -a GSM phone supported by China Mobile and a Unicom-supported CDMA phone - to stay in touch.

One of those people is Yu Qing, a 28-year-old from Beijing.

"I make a lot of calls on the mobile phone and I really care about the phone's radiation on the human body," Yu said

Claimed to have lower electronic radiation, CDMA phones are marketed by Unicom as "green phones".

The company hopes CDMA's voice quality and believed lower radiation can bring it more customers.

But there is still no clear signs indicating that radiation from GSM phones has an impact on health.

"Who knows," Yu said, "it is always good to be cautious."

If the CDMA network coverage is similar to the GSM network, Yu said she will move permanently to CDMA.

Unicom's CDMA network covers 330 cities in China and it is expanding coverage and upgrading the network to a higher generation.

China Mobile controls 70 per cent of the market and is anxious about CDMA.

To maintain its customers and attract new users, China Mobile launched a promotion plan to give customers more benefits based on their spending, including free mobile secretary services and free call time.

Experts view competition between the two carriers as good news for customers and the development of the industry.

"Customers will have more choices and mobile carriers will have to upgrade service quality," said Yang Peifang, director of telecom policy centre at the Chinese Academy of Telecom Research.

But industry insiders also expressed concerns about Unicom's services, which support about 40 million users.

(China Daily September 3, 2002)