China's mobile communications market is growing rapidly: the mobile arm of Siemens AG (Siemens mobile) is providing support to the two mobile providers China Mobile and China Unicom for expansion of their networks and for service offerings.

Several orders for various provinces were signed recently at a total value of 70 million US dollars.

For China Unicom, Siemens mobile is expanding the GSM network in Shanghai, Guangxi, and Liaoning, among other places. In addition, Siemens is equipping the mobile network in Shanghai with technology for location-based services. This will allow Shanghai Unicom, for the first time, to offer location-based services in its GSM network in the metropolis. As sole supplier of prepaid technology, Siemens also received several orders from China Unicom for expansion of countrywide prepaid systems. For China Mobile, Siemens is expanding the GSM networks in Shanghai, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan. The expansion of the networks for both mobile providers is scheduled for completion by the end of March.