China unveils massive mobile shake-up

With the world’s biggest mobile market, China, has decided that its communications industry is ripe for a shake up. And what a shake up: the Chinese government has decided to create new, merged telecoms companies to sell mobile, as well as internet and fixed, connections.

As a result of the changes, China Unicom and China Netcom will merge and China Mobile will buy Unicom’s CDMA network, according to Reuters, while China Mobile will takeover China Railway Communication.

It’s an absolutely fascinating series of changes, all apparently aimed at balancing China Mobile’s dominance in the country’s mobile market. Rather puzzlingly, the Chinese government hasn’t put any timeframe on when the changes will happen – or provided that much detail on how all it will all work out. Watch this space.