China's telecommunications supervisor has issued long-awaited third-generation, or 3G mobile phone licenses to three mobile operators, a move that is expected to lead to billions of dollars being invested in building new networks.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said China's biggest mobile operator, China Mobile, was awarded a license for TD-SCDMA, the domestically-developed 3G standard.

Wang Jianzhou, the president of China Mobile said the company had already started construction of new networks to cover all cities by 2011.

"After our testing operation of the network which started from last April, we have seen that the new technology has developed into maturity. By this June, we will finish the second phase of the network construction which covers 28 cities around the country. "

The other two main carriers, China Telecom and China Unicom, received respectively licenses for the 3G standards of U.S.-developed CDMA2000 and Europe's WCDMA. Both the 3 operators expressed an active attitude on the future competition and cooperation in the field of 3G mobile.

The 3G high-speed networks can handle faster data downloads, allowing handset users to make video calls and watch TV programs.

Official expects that there could be about 280 billion yuan, or about 40 billon dollars of direct investment in new networks over the next two years, an effective measure to boost the domestic demand and optimize telecom market competition.