image001.jpg
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has awarded licenses to several private domestic companies to operate as mobile virtual network operators in a move to add competition and variety into China's monopolized mobile telecoms sector.
China’s mobile telecom sector has been dominated by state-owned giants China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom which provide mobile services to over 800 million subscribers. The newly licensed private firms will be able to add their own services to bandwidth and equipment leased from the three state-owned telecoms. However, they are required to first obtain an agreement to cooperate with one of the three state-owned providers.
The Ministry expects the addition of new players to pave the way for better price packages, improved customer service, increased innovation and an overall great variety of mobile services available to the public.
Under the new policy, there will be no limit on the number of new mobile virtual network operators that can get licenses after the initial two year test period, which runs from Dec. 31, 2013 to Dec. 31, 2015, as long as interested companies submit their application to run a network by July 2014.
The new policy came into effect in May 2013. Since then, 11 companies have been granted MVNO licences. They include Net.cn, a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group; e-commerce company Beijing Jingdong; Zhejiang Lianlian Technology Co. Ltd; DiXin Tong Inc. and Baishi Zaixian Ltd.
