News
CBN to take on China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.
China Broadcasting Network (CBN) became the country’s fourth telecoms operator after winning a licence from the government this week.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on its web site that it had awarded a basic telecoms service licence to the state-owned broadcaster to promote what China.org described as the "three-network convergence" – a state-advocated project aimed at merging telecom, television and Internet services into a single network.
MIIT revealed few other details, commenting only that CBN is authorised to provide domestic Internet data transmission and telecoms infrastructure services.
China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom currently dominate the local Chinese market. China Mobile is also the largest mobile operator in the world, reporting a total mobile customer base of 833.85 million at the end of March.
China Telecom reported an overall customer base of 202.64 million mobile users at the end of March this year. China Unicom has struggled to maintain customer growth, but previously said it expected to add 6.61 million mobile customers in Q1, reversing the quarterly subscriber losses it posted last year. The telco returned to monthly mobile customer base growth in January and by the end of February had 257.8 million subscribers.
Analysts do not see CBN having a major impact on the business of its three rivals, at least in the near term.
"We do not think CBN will become a major threat to existing telecom operators in the near term, unless CBN can resolve its own financial bottlenecks and complete the process of national television and broadcasting network consolidation," Nomura analyst Leping Huang wrote in a research note, Reuters reported.
Reuters added that Huang expects the company to spend CNY20 billion (€2.7 billion) in telecoms this year, which is equivalent to 5% of China’s total spending in the sector.
