China Mobile is betting big on 3G services. The company aims to invest 58.8 billion Yuan i.e. roughly around $ 8.6 billion for its upcoming 3G services foray. The Chinese government recently granted licences to the country’s mobile operators to launch 3G services.

China is pushing forward its indigenously built TD-SCDMA standard for mobile services. China Mobile plans to utilize the investment to erect 60,000 such base stations for 3G services offerings this year and intends to increase this number to 80,000 so as to cover 238 cities.

China Mobile claims to have successfully conducted an eight month test trials of its 3G services. The company also claims to have already built 20,000 base stations and registering a subscriber base of 330,000.

The country last week granted China Mobile to offer 3G service in the TD-SCDMA band, China Unicom under WCDMA band and China Telecom under CDMA 2000 1xEV-DO. The three operators are collectively expected to invest $ 41 billion for their respective 3G services launch.

China Mobile is expected to lead the 3G market with a market share of 58 percent and a subscriber base of 9.4 million by 2010. China Unicom is expected to have 3.3 million subscribers for 3G services while China Telecom is estimated to have 3.5 million subscribers by that time. In total the operators are expected to have round 16 million subscribers for 3G which is just 2 percent of the country’s total mobile connections, says a study from Wireless Intelligence.