Beijing - China's authorities on Wednesday issued licences for third-generation (3G) mobile phone services to three operators.

The three operators, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, now granted access to the world's largest mobile phone market with 600 billion users will all pursue individual technologies, the official Xinhua news agency said.

China Mobile, the country's largest carrier is to introduce the the domestic TD-SCDMA standard it developed together with Siemens AG, while China Unicom uses the established European UMTS standard, while China Telecom's platform uses the US CDMA 2000 system.

Experts believe use of the established systems will make it easier for the two smaller operators to dissimilate their 3G services, which allow faster data transfer on mobile phones.

China Unicom and China Telecom are expected to take a slice out of China Mobile's market share, which currently covers about three quarters of the country's mobile phone market. China Mobile wants to sign up 100 million 3G users and have its network coverage extended to all cities until 2011, Xinhua said.

The Ministry for Industry and Information Technology said it expected investments into new infrastructure by the three operators of 280 billon yuan (41 billion dollars).

The ministry also passed regulations regarding competition, user rights, data security and rates. (dpa)