China Mobile to spend 59 bln yuan on 3G stations

BEIJING Jan 10 (Reuters) - China Mobile (0941.HK), the world's largest mobile carrier, plans to invest 58.8 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) this year to build 60,000 third generation (3G) base stations, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

It cited a company announcement as saying the plan would increase the number of China Mobile's 3G base stations to more than 80,000 across China.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology awarded China Mobile a licence on Wednesday to operate a 3G network based on the domestically developed TD-SCDMA standard.

At the same time the ministry gave approval to smaller rivals China Unicom (0762.HK) and China Telecom (0728.HK) to develop WCDMA and CDMA 2000 networks, respectively.

The ministry said last month that spending on 3G equipment by carriers would total $41 billion over the next two years. ($1=6.835 Yuan) (Reporting by Alan Wheatley, Editing by Peter Blackburn)