China Mobile to spend $8.6bn on network in 2009

China Mobile will invest 58.8 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) on the development of its 3G network.

The money will be used to build around 60,000 base stations covering 238 cities, sina.com reported.

China Mobile currently operates over 20,000 3G base stations across the country, with around 330,000 subs. Once complete, the 80,000 base stations will cover 70% of China's provincial-level cities.

China Mobile has been awarded a license to develop a 3G network based on the homegrown TD-SCDMA standard. China Unicom has been awarded a W-CDMA license, and China Telecom's network will use the cdma2000 EV-DO standard.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology expects operators to spend around 280 billion yuan ($41billion) in direct network investment over the next two years.