Fiber manufactures going out of mire

5/31/2006, According to the newest published 2005 Top 100 electronic manufactures list by MII, Fiber business increases by 31.2%, and cable business increases by 44%. Jiangsu Zhongtian also entered the top 10 profiter, ranked no. 6 with profit ratio 11.4%.
In year 2006, 3G and FTTH have lanunched in China, there is continuous need on fiber and cable product. If manufactures can invest more on R&D, so they can kick off traditional competition. State press reported.
In the last year, Leading fiber manufacture in China, YOFC's manufacturing capability has reached 15million KM fiber, acquiring 10% of market share around the world.
Top one cable manufacture, Hengtong succeeded in wining the bid of China Mobile and Shanghai Telecom. Especially, their cost control strategy begun to have good result.
Through cooperating with YOFC, Zhongtian's cable manufacturing capability increased from 1.4million KM to 1.85 million KM. They are also the No.1 special cable producer in China.
Futong group developed fiber pre-rod for FTTH application. Now they are one of the 2 companies responsible for fiber standard creating in ITU-T.
Yongding group's revenue in 2005 increased to 4.746 billion RMB, a 226million increase than year 2004.

China mobile coveting Indian Reliance

5/30/2006, Just after the bid on Millicom, China mobile will then investe Reliance, one of the largest carrier in India. State press reported today.
Last October, China Mobile successfully accquire Hongkong based Huarenwanzhong, this week, they will announce the 5.3billion USD purchase on Millicom. Besides this, China mobile already has a purchasing list aiming at developing market all around the world.
Although China Mobile's overseas expansion is considered good for Chines companies, but still some critics point out that that is abuse of national treasure, because China Mobile is a state-hold company.

China Unicom secretly testing Wimax
5/30/3006, "China Unicom will finish the WiMax testing within year. " Mr. Yaojin Liu, CTO of Shanghai Unicom, branch of China Unicom, said to state press.
China Unicom is now testing Wimax technology in Guangdong,Shanghai and Dalian. They aim the technology at wholesale customers, especially goverment and environment protection industry. Wimax will be a complementary technology to fiber access and 3G technology. Liu said.
The test is now based on 802.16e standard, several domestic and foreign companies provide the Wimax equipments.

France Telecom may consider Chinese 3G system

BEIJING -(Dow Jones)- France Telecom's research unit in Beijing said Friday it is assessing China's locally developed 3G standard, which its parent company may consider using in Europe at a later date.

China's Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) standard uses a different frequency spectrum for mobile-phone calls and data transfers than the other two 3G standards, W-CDMA and CDMA2000.

France Telecom R&D Beijing's public relations manager, Li Juan, said research center applied to join the TD-SCDMA Forum, a group that promotes technical exchanges on the Chinese standard, earlier this month.

That application was approved by the forum Thursday, said a spokeswoman at the TD-SCDMA group.

"There is a possibility we will consider using TD-SCDMA in Europe when the frequency spectrum for WCDMA in Europe runs out of capacity," said Li.

France Telecom's wireless division, Orange, holds the frequency spectrum in Europe that supports TD-SCDMA, she said.

China is testing TD-SCDMA networks in several cities nationwide. But there are still no commercial networks based on the standard, which China helped develop and also wants to export.

France Telecomis the first overseas telecommunications operator to join the forum. The forum's spokeswoman, Zhang Lulu, said that reflects growing foreign interest in TD-SCDMA.

France Telecom cooperates with China Telecom, China's largest fixed-line operator by number of subscribers, to jointly buy telecoms equipment. Orange is planning to open an office in Beijing in June that will help local telecoms-equipment makers tailor products for Orange.

ZTE cellphone handles quality scandal in Sudan
5/29/2006, Because of quality problem, Sudan Telecom is considering claim on huge amount compensation to ZTE, the ambitous Chinese communication equipment manufacture. State press reported today.
It was said CEO of Sudan Telecom was very angry toward ZTE, and asked to stop all contract negotiating with ZTE now. But a spokesman of ZTE denied such report, although he admitted there really happened cellphone problem in Sudan. ZTE has good relationship with Sudan telecom, ZTE will handle this carefully. The spokesman said.

China asking IEEE appoligize for WAPI

China asking IEEE appoligize for WAPI
5/28/2006,China Broadband wireless IP standard workgroup told media that they have appealed to ISO about the WAPI voting result. According to an anouncement to Xinhua News agency from this workgroup:" there are more than 49 items that IEEE violates basic rule of ISO, they have clear evidence on this, and this is rarely seen during the history of ISO. "
WAPI and IEEE 802.11i， complementary to the de facto standard on safe problem, 30 country members of ISO made a vote on March 7. WAPI won 8 supporting votes, and IEEE 802.11i won 24 votes.
In the announcement by China broadband wireless IP standard workgroup, they said:" IEEE continuously violateed basic rule of ISO, misleading many members make opponent vote. The voting is unfair, China cannot accept it."

See report on the same thing from US media

China has launched a case against American chipmaker Intel's near-monopoly on encryption standards for wireless local area network (WLAN) equipment, state press reported Monday. China has accused the makers of the technology developed by the chipmaking giant Intel of unethical behaviour and has asked the International Standards Organization (ISO) to review the case, Xinhua news reported. It says that the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), actual makers of the technology, broke ISO rules when its national bodies voted on new technology to mend security loopholes in the WLAN standard. China now wants the ISO to investigate the fast-track process to determine "whether the ethical and procedural rules and principles have indeed been violated and whether the ballots have been unfairly influenced by those ethical and procedural violations". China's WAPI and American IEEE applied to the ISO for a new international standard last October, but the Chinese technology's bid for approval was rejected in a ballot in March this year. "The serious violations are rare in ISO's standardization history," said the statement, adding that IEEE "unjustly" and "unfairly" violated ISO rules which misled many national bodies that voted on the new international standard. ISO will investigate the case, the report said. China has bristled at depending on proprietary foreign high technology and in 2003 tried to force multinationals wanting to sell wireless computer equipment to support its proprietary and secret encryption standard called WAPI. Beijing was forced to scrap its plans for the system when companies such as Intel threatened to stop selling their products in China, claiming they would have to give up intellectual property rights to Chinese companies.

Shanghai IPTV aiming 80K subscribers
5/27/2006, Mr. Huaiyu Li, CEO of Shanghai Media group subsidiary, Baishitong Inc. ,told local media that they would have 50K to 80K IPTV subscribers within the year. After september, they will advance the IPTV promotion in Shanghai area. Li said:"when subscribers exceeds 80K, we can say the operation enter a good state. As Now, Shanghai media group is still in the investing Phase. "

China Wimax Standard prepares for final checking
5/27/2006, China WiMax standard edited by China communication standardizing association (CCSA) is now prepared for the final checking by MII. This 802.16d based standard is drafted by ZTE, Shanghai Bell, Huawei, MII communication research institute and many other related organizations. Spokeman from CCSA said that China enterprises now have more core patents than in 2G/3G area.

China Launch satalite broadband access also

5/25/2006, AT&T launched their satalite broadband access service yesterday, China Satalite communication company today made the same annoucement. Through a new gateway in Beiijing, China Satalite communication, the only satalite carrier in China, can now provide integrated services including voice, high speed internet and video to Norhteast, Beijing and Tianjing area, middle China area. By October this year, two new gateway will in use in Shanghai and Guangzhou, by then China satalite can provide services around the nation.

MRV Purchases Chinese transceiver manufacture HG Genune

5/24/2006, Markerter from HG Genune told us they were now belong to Luminent OIC, the wholely owned transceiver subsidery of MRV group. Noam Lotan, CEO of MRV, and Mr. Ma, Xinqiang, Chairman of HG group, signed the agreement yesterday in Wuhan.

According to the news release provided on HG group website, MRV will invest 45million USD to purchase all shares of HG genune hold by HG group, about 95.71%. Also HG gourp will invest 5million USD　to accquire 15% of Luminent OIC shares. MRV promised they would acitvily to make Luminent OIC public. If they cannot make the IPO on time, they will provide 45million USD to buy back the shares.

HG genune is founded in year 2002, its revenue reached 15million USD last year, with about 450K USD net income. HG genune has one of the best manufacting and R&D facilities in fiberoptics industry around Asia region. It now has nearly 800 employees. Its products include kinds of transceivers and OSAs, chips.

--
Liu,Jacques
Editor in Chief of China fiber optics online (www.c-fol.net)
SKype:jacquesliu
English blog: http://chinafiberoptics.blogspot.com
Chines Blog: http://blog.sohu.com/members/telecom-next/

Chancellor Merkel helps Siemens win 1.4billion RMB contract

Chancellor Merkel helps Siemens win 1.4billion RMB contract
5/23/2006, During her first official visit to China, German Chancellor Angela Merkel help Siemens communication win multimillion dollar contract from China Mobile and China Unicom.

The contract from those 2 mobile carriers seems a good retort to the gossip that Siemens communication will be purchased by CHinese communication giant Huawei.

Merkel is accompanied by Economy Minister Michael Glos, Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee and a delegation of 40 top managers from companies like Deutsche Bank, Allianz, SAP and Siemens.

Other important news today

PCCW cooperates with Murdoch on IPTV
The largest IPTV service provider in the world, PCCW in Hongkong today announced that they will cooperate with Meida Tycoon, Rupert Murdoch on IPTV service providing. PCCW introduced NowBroadband TV service from Septermber 2003. Now their subscribers have reached 500K. From septermber last year, Murdoch's company had provided 11 channels content to PCCW.

--
Liu,Jacques
Editor in Chief of China fiber optics online (www.c-fol.net)
SKype:jacquesliu
English blog: http://chinafiberoptics.blogspot.com
Chines Blog: http://blog.sohu.com/members/telecom-next/

China Media think UTStarcom has more opporunities to be delisted
5/19/2006, UTStarcom today announced that they received an additional notice from Nasdaq. In the news release, UTStarcom said that Nasdaq listing qualification panel had agreed that they could continue their listing on Nasdaq national market. They hoped they could fill the 10-Q form on June 1st. I cannot tell their is bigger opporunities be delisted from the news release. I just donot understand why so many Chinese media get their conclusion. Maybe UTStarcom doesnot have a good PR department.
Today's other news, First, Huawei introduced their Tbps GPON equipment during Hongkong Broadband forum. It is interesting Huawei announce this GPON product in an Asia forum, not in Chicago next month.
A gossip, Mr. Wang,jianzou, CEO of CHina mobile is said to be the new minister of MII(Ministry of Information Industry ). Of Course he denied. In China, there are always so many gossips,canards, rumors.

Telecom Price cut looms in China5/18/2006, May 17 is international telecom day. On this day, MII hold a seminar on the possible price cut of telecom service. Telecom Expert, Professof Lv, tingjie of BUPT pointed out that unbalanced marketing structure is the cause of high price in China. Take China Mobile as an example, they have big scale economy, their cost to increase one customer is much lower than their competitors. Each market extending strategy of China mobile will have big pressure on competitors. Also all telecom service providers are state-hold companies, there is no real competition in China. These days, Chinese media report the price cut action in Beijing market. Just because the goverment recognized that the telecom service price is too high, they push the carriers to do something on price cut. Experts also suggest goverment to let more civilians to attend the price making so that they can have active affect on carriers.
Fiberhome build FTTH in BELARUSThis is the first project Fiberhome wins in that country. The engineering include hundreds of OLTs and ONUs.
China Mobile will launch Google search on cellphoneThis reported by Wall Street Journal. But Wang,jianzou, CEO of CHina Mobile didnot tell the detailed date they will launch this service. Yesterday, China Mobile cooperated with RIM to launch the first blackberry service in mainland CHina.

Siemens signed to purchase Photonic bridge

/ Huawei to accaure Siemens communication?

5/16/2006, Shanghai, Siemens, Photonic Bridge today finally signed agreement, Siemens will invest millions of USD to accquire Photonic Bridge, which is a optical networking equipment developer and manufacture. Siemens didnot announce the detail of this deal. Photonic Bridge was founded in year 2000 by Lucent China veterans, they are the first to introduce Sycamore's advanced optical network products to China. But as the optical bubble burst, they found them in a difficult situation. The big competitors in China didnot want them survive, their business dwindled quickly. This situation changed until the year before last year, they became a Siemens OEM partner. According to Mr. Xu,jian, CEO of Photonic Bridges, their 2005 revenue reached 25million USD, 80-90% percent is for Siemens. Siemens China said they will not intervene the managment of Photonic Bridges now, and no layoff will happen in Photonic Bridge.Just one day before this purchasing agreement, Many medias in China is spreading a big news that Huawei will purchase Siemens Communcaiton business. Although both Huawei and Siemens China denied the news, Chinese medias still hope that will happen. They think the possilbe accquiring is suitable for Huawei, and the most important thing for Huawei is how to bring the siemens communication business back to profit. I donot believe the reality of such news, I am dumbfounded by the wideness and quickness of the spreading of this news. It originated from an article on a Chinese Newspaper, Just in oneday, everybody around the China knew this, It has to thanks to the Internet.

China Netcom appoints new CEO

5/16/2006,China Netcom today announced that Mr. Tian,suning will leave the CEO positon from May 17, Mr. Zuo,xunsheng will take his position. Tian will still be China Netcom's vice chairman. Zuo,xunsheng has nearly 30years experience in China communication industry. He once was the general manager of Shandong telecom. Tian,suning told the press that he believed Xunsheng will bring their business to a better position, realize their transform to broadband and multimedia service provider.

Nortel welcome Chinese supplier

5/16/2006, Ottwa, Nortel invited 12 CHinese component suppliers to attend a Chinese supplier seminar hold in Ottwa these days. WTD, Accelink, Fiberxon and Gigacom are 4 optical component companies among the 12 suppliers invited by Nortel.

Why is Lu, not Wu leave UTStarcom?

See below news release from UT, Everyone was talking about that Wu will leave UT, nobody noticed Lu, why the final result show such a inverse situation?
According to some Chinese media, From early this year, Lu came to China frequently, he also tried to let more Chinese employees to know him. Insiders say this is a sign that he will replace Wu.
It is funny that Lu not Wu stay in UT. But from my perspective, Wu is welcomed by media, by his employee, Wu has clear insight on UT's product line and market. I hope Wu can survive UT this time.


5/10/2006, ALAMEDA, Calif. -- UTStarcom, Inc. (Nasdaq: UTSI - message board), today announced that its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hong Lu, notified the Board of Directors of his resignation. Mr. Lu will remain as Chairman and CEO of the company until December 31, 2006, focusing on the Company's strategic opportunities and assisting during the transition. Mr. Lu will remain as a strategic advisor to the company after his formal departure in December. Tom Toy, currently an independent director of UTStarcom, will assume the position of chairman of the board as of January 1, 2007.
"I believe that now is the right time for me to pass the company's leadership to a new management team who will take UTStarcom to the next stage," stated Hong Lu. "I have great confidence in the company's prospects and believe that its new leadership and employees will successfully carry the business forward."
Hong's vision drove the company's growth into a multi-billion dollar provider of IP-based telecom equipment, and become the leader in China's PAS market," stated Tom Toy. In addition, under Hong's leadership, UTStarcom has been successful in expanding the company's presence in such markets as Japan, India, Latin America, Europe and North America. We thank him for his tremendous contributions and tireless commitment to the company and wish him the very best in all his future endeavors."
"Hong has been great leader and a great friend and partner for the last 11 years," added Ying Wu. "I am confident that together we will make the transition smoothly and I truly believe that UTStarcom has a bright future with a great team of employees."
Ying Wu, CEO of China, will assume the CEO position as of January 1, 2007. Mr. Wu has been UTStarcom's Executive Vice-President and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors since October 1995. Prior to its merger with Unitech Telecom, Inc., he was the President of Starcom, Inc. Before founding Starcom, Inc., Mr. Wu was a member of the technical staff of Bellcore (now Telcordia). From 1987 to 1988, Mr. Wu was a consultant to AT&T Bell Labs (now part of Lucent Technologies). He holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Beijing Industrial University.
UTStarcom also announced that it started a search for a Chief Operating Officer who will be responsible for overseeing UTStarcom's worldwide operations and supporting its infrastructure enhancement efforts. This position, based in California, will work closely with the CEO in executing on the Company's strategy.

Who will get China's frst mobile TV licence?
5/10/2006, Reported by First Financial Daily, China National Radio, China Raido International and another company belong to Beijing TV have made the application for first mobile TV license in China. But according to chief engineer of China National Radio, Mr. Qian,yuelin, SRAFT still didnot make any response to their application. But Qian is confident to accquire the license.

For the Mobile TV standard problem, It was said the DMB standard from Koear will become the winner from the competiton in MediaFlow from Qualcomm, DVB-H from Europe and the Japanese standard.

China Unicom confirm international cooperation on CDMA network
5/10/2006, Impact by the possible invsetment by KDDI, KT and Sprint, China Unicom's Hongkong stock price skyrocked to the two-years high position. It increased 7.5% to 7.0HKD this morning. Both KDDI, KT have denied the investment. One spokeman from KDDI said they would not make invesment, they only had interest on cooperating with Unicom on roaming and 3G technology. But Mr. Li, Gang, VP of China Unicom yesterday confirmed with a reporter that they do have some cooperation plan on CDMA network, investing to Unicom is only one of the cooperating way.

Guangdong Netcom purchase WiMAX equipment
5/9/2006, From Local newspaper, Guangdong Netcom has signed agreement with 2 WiMAX(802.16d) equipment suppliers to purchase their products. According to the full plan of Guangdong Netcom, the purchase will amount to 280million RMB. After Guangdong Netcom, Shanghai, Jiangsu and some other province also will follow their example. Guangdong Netcom will deploy these equipments to each city of the province. They will focous on low-end enterprise customer and high end personal customer using this technology. This is because China Netcom only has 10M Spectrum resource on 3.5GHz spectrum.

CCTV accquired 2nd IPTV License
5/9/2006, From The first financial daily, Spokeswoman of SARFT(The State Administration of Radio Film and Televison)，Hong Zhu confirmed with the press that CCTV had got the 2nd IPTV licence in CHina. This license was the same one with the first one issued to Shanghai Media Group.
According to other leader of SARFT, they still have no big plan on IPTV promotion in China. The 2 licenses issued only is a kind of experiment. They will keep the tight control on the IPTV developement in China.

China Telecom CN2 enter North America
HERNDON, Va. -- China Telecom USA today announced that its parent company, China Telecom, the largest fixed-line operator in China, is planning to launch the Next Generation Carrying Network CN2 in North America. CN2 is a new MPLS next generation IP platform for businesses, designed to support both voice and data services. The CN2 Network began rollout in China in mid-2005. CN2 has direct coverage across 194 cities in China with global PoPs planned for London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Singapore, San Jose, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC. CN2 is linked to ChinaNet's more than 35 million registered customers and will provide direct connections to all major global ISPs for direct traffic routing.
CN2 is a newly built, separate network designed to provide superior reliability and performance to support mission-critical and high-priority business applications. CN2 provides the following cost effective services:
High-performing global Virtual Private Networking Next generation networking (NGN) -- converged communications (voice, data and video services) Enable Future 3G mobile application communications across CN2 network backbone Centralized network management -- end-to-end real time network monitoring and customer network management Enhanced network performance in terms of latency, packet loss and availability Network-to-Network interface (NNI) to provide truly global MPLS VPN connectivity across other global networks. This new network, which is based upon MPLS technology, runs separate to the existing ChinaNet Network. CN2 has five levels of Quality of Service (QoS) management, VPN service management, traffic and performance analysis, and customer information distribution. "Both IP and MPLS can be used to create corporate VPNs. However, MPLS VPN is more dynamic, combining the intelligence of private IP routing with the added performance of label switching to move packets between any location in the network," commented Donald Tan, President of China Telecom USA. He continued, "CN2 also provides a greater degree of security for voice and other types of business traffic since the MPLS routing table is separate from the public Internet. Multinational companies that use CN2 will experience network performance enhancements, including network reliability, flexibility, simplicity and scalability, which are unmatched by the traditional Internet."