BEIJING, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- China Unicom said here Wednesday that its Macao subsidiary has been authorized to provide third-generation (3G) mobile phone services in Macao based on the CDMA2000 standard.

    China Unicom Macao's service will be available in less than a year, according to the company.

    The Beijing-based company expects the operation to provide valuable lessons for building and developing a third-generation network on the Chinese mainland.

    Macao Telecom Company (CTM) and Hutchison Telecom (Macao) acquired licenses that are valid for eight years.

    There are three 3G standards in the world -- TD-SCDMA on the Chinese Mainland, WCDMA in Europe and CDMA2000 in the United States.

    The mainland, which has over 400 million cellphone users, is expected to issue its first 3G license in 2006 based on the homegrown TD-SCDMA standard.