Unicom's sets out standardization strategy

China Unicom Chairman Wang Jianzhou said the company was in talks to take up to a 29% stake in Romania's POSTelecom, as part of the carrier's strategy to take stakes in emerging market carriers and gain some leverage with CDMA equipment vendors. Unicom is China's sole operator using Code Division Multiple Access technology. It hopes to force standardization and push handset prices down. Wang said the technology is good, but plagued by multiple country implementation standards making services like roaming problematic. Since taking up CDMA, Unicom has seen handset prices drop from RMB 2,500 to RMB 1,000.