Emerging Telecom Carriers Condemn 'Unfair Competition'

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, July 04, 2002

Emerging Telecom Carriers Condemn 'Unfair Competition'

China's emerging telecom carriers condemned dominant carriers for "unfair competition" and called for concrete protection from the government. The government should launch the telecom law as soon as possible to ensure a healthy, fair and equal competitive environment, industry experts said.

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China's emerging telecom carriers condemned dominant carriers for "unfair competition" and called for concrete protection from the government.

China Railcom, a small player in the fixed-line telecom business, claimed employees of China Netcom - the dominant carrier in North China - "intentionally" cut off its network in a northern city and led to communication being down for several days.

According to sources from China Railcom's branch in Tangshan, in northern Hebei Province, China Netcom cut off the telephone network of China Railcom three times between June 6 and 14.

"Many users could not use their telephones," said Liu Rongfu, president of China Railcom's Tangshan Branch. "This rude action severely hurt China Railcom's reputation."

A manager at China Netcom's Tangshan Branch responded to the accusation by stating the telephone line of Railcom was "too close" to Netcom's and was thus "unsafe" for Netcom's ordinary operation.

The anonymous manager said he did not know whether any users had been influenced following the lack of communication.

Fair competitive environment called for creating

In a related development, China Unicom - a minor player in both fixed-line and mobile telecom - complained of unfair treatment by dominant players in both lines of business.

In Sichuan Province, where the fixed-line telephone business is dominated by China Telecom, the Unicom network was allegedly cut off by employees of China Telecom, which led to an eight-hour communications halt for Unicom users.

In Suining County of Sichuan Province, employees of China Telecom reportedly intruded into Unicom's operation centre on April 12 and cut off telephone trunk lines, which immediately stopped Unicom users' access to communication.

The so-called troublemakers allegedly admitted what they did, claiming their supervisors asked them to do the dirty work.

China Unicom severely suffered after experiencing hard market promotion for the newly launched code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile telecom services.

Due to an extreme shortage in the supply of handsets, CDMA users grew slowly with only 800,000 subscribers in May; lagging far behind market expectation.

China Mobile, the dominant mobile carrier, said in a conference the actual number of CDMA subscribers was only one-tenth of the number China Unicom announced.

This was a heavy blow for China Unicom, as it further reduced investors' confidence in CDMA services.

China Unicom made a fierce and quick response, and entrusted lawyers to settle China Mobile's "severe distortion and malicious depreciation" toward its competitor.

China's telecom watchdog, the Ministry of Information Industry, recently reiterated its strong condemnation to related parties, and said the troublemakers would be punished according to the law.

However, such cases happened time and time again, and very few people or companies are actually punished.

Therefore, the government should launch the telecom law as soon as possible to ensure a healthy, fair and equal competitive environment, industry experts said.

China still has no telecom law but only a Telecom Regulation issued two years ago.

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