Top management from China Unicom's (CHU) public relations department has denied news released earlier by local media saying that China Unicom is going to invest CNY10 billion to upgrade its GSM network.

However the representative has not made any remark on whether China Unicom is considering any possible upgrade or investment in GSM in the future.

News released on November 19 said that China Unicom will make efforts to transform and upgrade its GSM network with more than CNY10 billion, and possibly CNY18 billion in 2006. Reports also showed that China Unicom is planning to upgrade its GSM network in some top-tier cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to 2.5G so that people there can use wireless networks and GPRS networks.

China Unicom's total user number has reached 125 million, of which 93.195 million are GSM users and 32.173 million are CDMA users.