Shareholders OK merger of China's Unicom, Netcom

Posted 09 19 2008 4:53AM

BEIJING - Shareholders have given final approval to a merger of phone companies China Unicom Ltd. and China Netcom Corp. in a government-mandated industry restructuring, the companies announced Thursday.

China is trying to boost competition in its telecommunications market by rearranging its carriers into three groups, each with mobile and fixed-line assets: China Mobile Ltd., China Telecom Ltd. and the merged Unicom-Netcom company.

Netcom brings a fixed-line network to this deal, while Unicom will supply mobile service. Earlier Unicom shareholders approved a separate plan to sell one of the company's mobile networks to China Telecom.

The booming popularity of mobile service in China has left fixed-line carriers struggling to attract customers, while China Mobile has grown to be the world's biggest phone company by number of subscribers.

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China Unicom: http://www.chinaunicom.com.hk

China Netcom: http://www.china-netcom.com