China Unicom's aggressive push to phase out 2G networks is likely to shoot itself in the foot

China Unicom is currently actively promoting the withdrawal of 2G networks, hoping to transfer voice services to 3G networks. However, considering the poor coverage of Unicom's 3G network, such an aggressive strategy is likely to backfire.

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Among the three major operators, China Mobile has the best 4G network coverage. It currently has 1.8 million 4G base stations. The number of 4G base stations of China Unicom and China Telecom are 852,000 and more than 1 million respectively. Considering that China Telecom is promoting the construction of 4G network based on the 800MHz frequency band and more 4G base stations, China Telecom's 4G network coverage should be much better than that of China Unicom.

At present, China Unicom provides voice services through 3G and 2G networks. China Unicom's 2G network uses the low-frequency 900MHz band, so it has better network coverage; the 3G network uses the high-frequency 1.8GHz and 2.1GHz, so the coverage effect is much worse than 2G, and even worse than China Mobile's 2G network, which currently has the best coverage.

China Mobile and China Telecom are promoting the withdrawal of 2G networks by promoting 4G Volte services, that is, using 4G networks to carry voice services. In this case, they use 4G networks to carry voice services. Since 4G networks have good coverage, users may even feel that 4G networks can provide clearer voice service experience than 2G networks.

China Unicom's 4G network coverage may actually be better than 3G, because China Unicom has begun to use 900MHz to build 4G networks in some areas. However, it is strange that it lags behind China Mobile and China Telecom in promoting Volte services, and instead hopes to carry voice services on 3G networks. This will likely result in users' voice services being far worse than those of China Mobile and China Telecom, and of course worse than its current 2G network.

Under such circumstances, China Unicom is aggressively pushing for its 2G network withdrawal, which will lead to poor voice service experience for its users. At present, its 4G users account for the largest proportion. Data as of February this year show that the 4G user proportions of China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom are 74.0%, 74.6% and 64.6% respectively. Will there be more than 100 million non-4G users leaving the network in large numbers due to the deterioration of voice services?

In fact, China Unicom's user loyalty is indeed relatively low. In 2017, its executives announced that the number of users brought by Tencent alone exceeded 50 million. However, its net increase in mobile users was only 2034.1, which means that it has lost about 30 million users, indicating that its user mobility is quite high.

Faced with this situation, the author believes that China Unicom should slow down in promoting the withdrawal of 2G networks. It needs to accelerate the construction of 4G networks and actively promote volte services. It may be more appropriate to gradually push forward the withdrawal of 2G networks after ensuring that users have access to 4G voice services with good coverage. Aggressive promotion of the withdrawal of 2G networks is likely to cause more than 100 million non-4G users who have not yet switched to 4G to leave the network, and the voice service experience of its 4G users will also deteriorate.