China Mobile is making its GSM network it IP-compatible in a bid to tap the growing demand for mobile data services.
Huang Xiaquing, president of China Mobile Research Institute, the carrier's research arm, told a conference in Beijing on Thursday that non-voice services including ringback tone, music download, and MMS, now account over 27% to China Mobile's revenues. The company has more than 200 million MMS users, while downloads of ring back tone reached 470 million in the year.
Huang said that to meet the growing demand for data services in the next few years, China Mobile has launched an initiative to transform the GSM network with IP.
'Currently our core network is IP-compatible and over 50% of our voice is transmitted via IP,' he said. 'The next step is to transform our access network.'