China Unicom (CHU) has announced a timetable and the cost involved for the recovery of its communications services after the May 12 Sichuan earthquake.

China Unicom plans to invest CNY2.8 million on post-earthquake reconstruction. It hopes to make its network quality and service capacity reach the same level with that of pre-earthquake period by June 27, 2008 and make it better than the pre-earthquake level by August 27, 2008.

China Unicom says the May 12 Earthquake has caused a direct loss of up to CNY760 million to Sichuan Unicom, an affiliate of China Unicom, with about 3007 of the company's base stations damaged, 4762 kilometers of lines destroyed and 639 service rooms shattered. China Unicom says it sent a total of more than 5000 staff to rush to deal with the emergency after the earthquake occurred along with 38 emergency communications vehicles, 90 sets of VSAT satellite base stations, 2100 filling machines and 180 satellite telephones.

With the efforts made, China Unicom recovered its communications service in all the county and above level regions by May 17 and took a lead in resuming the communications service in the ten key towns as a task assigned by Sichuan Provincial Government on May 20. By June 9, China Unicom resumed the communications services of 3608 towns and recovered the operations of 2693 base stations.

Of the total investment, China Unicom will spend CNY610 million on recovering the construction of 956 base stations, 6300 kilometers of cable lines and more than 130 temporary rooms for business operations, and CNY2.2 billion on post-earthquake reconstruction which is expected to increase the company's network coverage by about 15% compared with that of the pre-earthquake period.