Partnership between China Unicom and MSN will make it possible for Unicom consumers to chat online through short massages, downloading through CDMA-based cells and web surfing at CDMA cells.

Zhai Yibing from China Unicom explained that Unicom users, once registered, are allowed to talk with PC-based MSN subscribers through short message. Unicome's C-Net subscribers can also choose to log on MSN through their mobiles or download MSN onto their mobiles.

Users have to pay both for web surfing through mobiles and for a fixed monthly charge. China Unicom said the payment mix had not been finalized yet but the monthly charge would likely be more than 10 yuan.

Three mobile producers, Samsung, LG and Haier have agreed to pre-stall MSN in three models.

MSN has 9.5 million PC-based subscribers in China, still lagging far behind its rival Tencent which has 140 million subscribers for its QQ, an online chatting service. A large part of Tencent's QQ users use mobile service which jointly provided by Tencent and its two partners, China Mobile and China Unicom.

To compete with QQ, Microsoft has forged alliance with China Mobile which has 250 million users and with China Unicom which ahs more than 125 million users. In September this year, Microsoft signed an agreement with China Mobile to offer mobile MSN service.

By People's Daily online