UNISK (Beijing) Information Technology Co Ltd, a joint venture between China Unicom and SK Telecom was officially launched in Beijing Thursday.

The venture provides a new way for foreign players to enter China's lucrative telecoms market.

"We are to take advantage of SK Telecom's technology and experience to roll out more value-added wireless telecom service to our subscribers," said Wang Jianzhou, president of China Unicom.

The registered capital for the venture is US$6 million, with China Unicom commanding 51 percent of the share and SK Telecom taking the remainder.

The new company is the first value-added telecom service joint venture in China.

China Unicom and SK Telecom inked preliminaries in March last year to set up the venture.

"It's a win-win deal for us to further accelerate the development of wireless value-added telecom service in the Chinese market," Wang said.

China Unicom is the country's only CDMA network operator with its subscribers reaching more than 20 million by the end of last month.

"The establishment of the joint venture will be a good reference point for foreign telecom players who want to be in China," said Chen Jinqiao, director of the China Academy of Telecommunications Research under the MII.

Lured by the lucrative telecom market, overseas telecom operators such as Vodafone, AT&T, Hong Kong's PCCW and Hutchison Whampoa are showing increasing enthusiasm about penetrating the Chinese telecom market.

Chen said he believed the unprecedented joint venture helped the regulators gain experience and would shorten appraisal time for future ventures of this kind.

Yesterday, the newly established company also officially kicked off its "U Park" services. According to Shang Bing, board chairman of UNISK (Beijing) Information Technology Co Ltd, the services - featuring multi-media messaging, digital photos, online games and online chat - mainly target young people.

(China Daily April 9, 2004)