Business news with words access+billion+phone. 4 news.

THE People's Insurance Company (Group) of China, or PICC, has agreed to invest 1.5 billion yuan (US$202 million) in Datang Mobile, the major developer of China's 3G mobile phone technology, Datang's parent firm said yesterday. The investment will finance the development of the long-awaited home-grown 3G technology TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous code division multiple access), and therefore hasten 3G licenses in China, industry insiders said. This is the biggest single investment by a Chinese insurance firm in telecommunications, Datang Telecom Technology and Industry Group said yesterday. "It is an agreement between two giants and it will boost the development of the Chinese telecommunications industry and lead to further innovation," Wu Yan, PICC's president, said. Both sides declined to reveal what percentage of stake PICC will take in Datang Mobile. The company is developing the new mobile standard, from chip design to wireless base stations. "TD-SCDMA

BANK of China Ltd's Hong Kong unit said its purchase of a 4.9 percent stake in Bank of East Asia Ltd, the city's third-largest bank, doesn't presage a takeover. BOC Hong Kong (Holdings) Ltd, 65.8 percent owned by China's second-largest bank, yesterday announced it paid HK$3.95 billion ($507 million) for the holding, calling it a "financial investment." "At this point in time, we don't contemplate any further transaction which involves Bank of East Asia," BOC Hong Kong spokeswoman Clarina Man said in a phone interview yesterday. Yesterday's announcement surprised some analysts, who were expecting an overseas lender to target Bank of East Asia to get access to its growing branch network in China, Bloomberg News reported. La Caixa, Spain's largest savings bank, holds a 4.2 percent stake in the company. "Bank of East Asia has always been talked about as a possible target for a foreign bank to take over as a fast way to get into China and Hong Kong,"

NIPPON Telegraph & Telephone Corp, the second-slowest growing company listed on Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average, posted a 69-percent decline in second-quarter profit as earnings fell at its mobile-phone unit. Net income slipped to 45.6 billion yen (US$405 million) in the three months ended September 30 from 146.8 billion yen a year earlier, according to figures provided by Tokyo-based NTT, Japan's largest phone company. One-time losses related to taxes at its regional unit contributed 68.6 billion yen to the profit decline. The company seeks to attract users to a fiber-optic network for Internet access and calls to reduce reliance on its mobile unit NTT DoCoMo Inc, whose second-quarter profit fell 15 percent. NTT yesterday said it would miss an original target for users at the fiber network, undermining efforts to bolster earnings outside of mobile services, which account for 77 percent of operating profit. "Bad results have been already expected, and the stock price has

SHARES in ZTE Corp surged by the 10 percent daily cap yesterday after it announced shareholders' approval to sell four billion yuan (US$526.3 million) in bonds to finance third-generation telephony development. Shenzhen-listed ZTE jumped 10 percent to 58.19 yuan, although the Shenzhen Composite Index dropped by 0.45 percent yesterday. "The big-cap 3G-related shares, such as China Unicom and ZTE, are expected to benefit from the coming 3G, and they are favored by investors," Yue Congzhong, an analyst at Zhongshan Securities, said in a recent note, who set ZTE's price target above 60 yuan. ZTE will raise four billion yuan through the sale of five-year convertible bonds to finance research, manufacture and construction of 11 projects, including a home-grown TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) phone and a new handset platform. ZTE, the biggest public telecommunications equipment vendor in China, got the lion's share of China Mobile's