Beginning of reform in telecommunication market

Market reform in the telecommunication field starts from the establishment of a State-owned base station corporation. It is good for the environment and the consumers, says an article of the Southern Metropolis Daily. Excerpts:

It has been reported that the central government has decided to establish a State-owned base station corporation with a registered capital of about 10 billion yuan ($1.64 billion). The three largest State-owned telecommunication enterprises China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile, will jointly hold the new corporation’s shares.

The new base station corporation will construct new base stations for the three telecommunication firms in the future. The three firms will also gradually hand over ownership of their current base stations to the new corporation.

Although the three firms have had different responses to the report, all of them back the building of the new corporation. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has also showed its support for the new base station on its official website.

In the current market atmosphere, the three firms have competed to build base stations. The central government’s poor supervision and local governments’ interest in attracting large-scale SOEs has allowed the firms to compete, creating a threat to the environment. The telecommunication firms choose the best places for their base stations in a bid to ensure the strongest signals. But they do not think of the stations’ influence on the local environment and residents’ health.

Hopefully, the new corporation can end the disorderly competition, and give comprehensive consideration to the location and construction of new base stations to lower the risk to the environment.

Besides, separating the base station business from telecommunication operations is the first step to open the latter to private capitals. In the future, the government will tightly control the base station networks, and the telecommunication market will be open to various investors to serve the consumers.