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Operators seek to heap pressure on China Mobile by sharing infrastructure and cooperating on equipment, handset procurement.
China Unicom on Wednesday established a broad partnership with rival China Telecom aimed at improving network performance and lowering costs.
The two operators have pledged to work together to accelerate shared infrastructure deployment in a bid to improve mobile coverage and performance more rapidly. They will also work together to restore one another’s services should they suffer outages caused by natural disasters and major emergencies.
In a statement, China Unicom and China Telecom said they will also "promote structural reform on the supply side," specifically handsets and network equipment, in order to "lower costs while improving operating efficiency."
By improving supply-side quality, the telcos hope to provide better networks and services to their customers.
In addition, China Unicom and China Telecom have agreed to improve interconnection between their respective networks to enhance the customer experience, and will also work together with foreign operators in order to improve the quality of international roaming services.
The partnership comes as China Unicom and China Telecom seek to compete more aggressively with market leader China Mobile.
In November, China Telecom added just over 1 million customers, giving it 196.6 million by the end of the month. China Unicom lost 346,000 customers during the same period, leaving it with 286.9 million in total.
By comparison, China Mobile had 825.2 million mobile customers at the end of November, having added 1.2 million during the month.
