Telecom consolidation looms

As reported here earlier, state said China's regulators are studying a proposal to consolidate China Unicom and China Netcom GSM networks under Unicom and put Netcom's CDMA operations under China Telecom, which would take over roughly half of Unicom's fixed network. If realized, the reorganization would put China's top telecom operators on an equal footing, with annual revenues at China Unicom and China Telecom expected to be roughly RMB170bn (US$20.48bn), compared to China Mobile's 2004 annual revenue of RMB192.4bn (US$23.18bn).