The consolidation and realignment we are seeing in Chinese telecom companies is a public/private service which is sorting itself out. Of its kind, it is much the largest in the world.
As the dust settles we appear to have three major carriers, China Netcom, China Mobile and China Telecom. Each of the companies will offer fixed-line, mobile and other services. They will be, as it were, full-service shops.
China Netcom is enhanced by adding in China Unicom — originally created as the state-run competitor to former monopoly service provider China Telecom.
China Mobile is acquiring China Tietong for its fixed-line network which will give it a full range of services.
China Telecom is taking on China Unicom‘s CDMA network and has sworn it will spend at least RMB80 billion on this newly acquired network aiming to have 100 million CDMA subscribers in three years.
Once the tents have been folded and the Olympic throngs have marched on and everything is working properly — almost certainly before the end of the year — China’s new telecom regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, will formally issue 3G licenses although that already seems, in some cases, a done deal.
China Mobile (in which Vodafone has a 3.3% stake) is already publicizing its 3G service, which will use the China-developed TD-SCDMA standard, and is already providing 3G services to about 18,000 users.
It is a very complicated scene and it has still not been worked out in full but basically it can be seen there will be three major players and the biggest of them, China Mobile, will probably be the first to offer 3G services in the form of TD-SCDMA.
Source: Network World and Daily Telegraph London
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