After selling its CDMA network to China Telecom, China Unicom has started to upgrade its voucher system and the company's Beijing branch has announced that it has launched a new-generation rechargeable card for mobile phone users to replace its original rechargeable card.

A representative from China Unicom Beijing branch says that unlike the old rechargeable card which can be only used in Beijing, the new China Unicom mobile phone rechargeable card can be used to recharge any number of China Unicom in any area of China, with exceptions of those in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. At the same time, China Unicom's recharge number has been changed to 10011.

China Unicom previously changed the recharge number for its old rechargeable card from 96533 to 10012 after it sold the CDMA network to China Telecom and the company maintained the recharge service for CDMA users. China Unicom's representative says that China Unicom and China Telecom are currently still preparing for the handover of the rechargeable card service and the timeline for China Unicom to stop the recharge service for CDMA users has not been decided.

According to China Unicom Beijing branch, the old rechargeable card and the new China Unicom mobile phone rechargeable card can both be used to recharge the China Unicom numbers until April 2009. Starting from April 2009, the old rechargeable card will be withdrawn from the market and the current 10012 recharge number will also be suspended around that time.