China Unicom's CDMA Goes Rural With Qualcomm

Chinese mobile service provider China Unicom (CHU) and American wireless service provider Qualcomm (QCOM) have jointly announced the first schedule of a CDMA relief program to bring CDMA technology to China's rural communities.

According to their plan, in the first schedule of the program Qualcomm will donate 1000 CDMA mobile phones to farmers who apply for small credit loans from the Rural Credit Cooperative Bank in Shaanxi Province and Ningxia Province.

China Unicom will be providing a fixed amount of subsidy for each of these mobile phones per month for two years.

Although their service is free, this will position CDMA in China's rural communities, which ultimately contains China's biggest group of potential consumers.