China Eastern Communications (Eastcom) has signed an agreement with China Unicom for sales of CDMA handsets, South China Morning Post said. Under the deal, Eastcom's distribution arm, Face One Telecommunications, would buy CDMA handsets from Unicom at wholesale prices and sell them to end-users at around onethird the market rate, provided they subscribed to Unicom's CDMA services. China Unicom would make up the price difference to Face One from the subscriber's usage fees over an 18- to 36-month period.
Under Chinese regulations, telecoms carriers are not allowed to trade mobile handsets nor provide subsidies, but China Unicom has been given special permission to launch short-term promotional packages to boost network sales.