China Mobile selects PON and fiber suppliers

February 25, 2010, China Mobile today announced the selection result on GPON/EPON suppliers. Huawei, ZTE, Shanghai Bell, Erission, Fiberhome win the GPON bid, and ZTE, Huawei, Shanghai Bell, Fiberhome become EPON suppliers of China Mobile. Erisson didn't join the EPON bid. China Mobile didn't publish the details of this selection. In China, this is the first time for large scale GPON selection by a major telecom service provider. Not like China Telecom and Unicom, China Mobile decided to choose both GPON and EPON technology, and they will prefer GPON technology.
Also in today, China Mobile announced that they will begin this year's fiber and cable product bid process. China Mobile will mainly select G.652 and G.653 fiber suppliers this time, any supplier with the right products can join the bid. According to China Mobile, there will be 2 rounds of check. First round, they will make selection based on paper material submitted by the suppliers. Second round, they will make on field check of the suppliers. Only passing these 2 rounds check, a fiber supplier can join the final bid of China Mobile.
The deadline for submitting the bid material is March 8, 2010.

Tianjin Unicom's FTTH network covers 58 communities

February 24, 2010, Tianjin Unicom has just announced that their FTTH network has covered 58 communities in the city which is 200KM east of Beijing.

Tianjin Unicom began to build FTTH access network last year. Up to the end of last year, they have coverd 300K subscribers. Tianjin Unicom plans to cover all citizens （10Mbps）and enterprises (100Mbps) in the city in 3 to 5 years through their FTTH network.

Now Tianjin Unicom has began to accept registration for the FTTH service in the 58 communities. They also said they will not increse the tariff for the new FTTH broadband service.

Tianjin is not the only city who aims at FTTH network in mainland China. Before them, Wuhan, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shanxi province all have similar FTTH city projects. But Tianjin Unicom really wants to become a leader in this wave of FTTH construction in mainland China.

In order to build high quality FTTH networks, according to the website of Tianjin Unicom, they have published a "FTTH engineering standard", also they developed some new products like double side ODF, fiber splitter in the building jointly with the equipment suppliers. Now they can finish FTTH installation in just 4 days after they accept request from the customer.

Free WiFi: Chinese Version

February 24, 2010, Do you want to have free WiFi service? You don't need to depend your local government to provide this service, or you don't need to go to a Macdonald, what you need to do is just to buy a new wireless gadget,"WiFi decoder".


This gadget only costs you about 150-200 RMB. It is just like a computer mouse, with USB interface and antenna which helps it easily find all wifi networks within 2KM range. The "smartest" function of this gadget is that it can automatically decode the encryption of any WiFi network it detects.


According to a retail of this WiFi decoder in Foshan, a city near Guangzhou, the gadget is just high power wireless network card integrated decoder software. By sharing with other people's internet connection, a user of this gadget can free access the internet. The only result is that the original internet connection owner will have to endure much slower speed. In a computer store in Foshan, a retailer can easily sell this more than 10 of this gadget each day.

So who develops these products? You can not find the name of manufacture on the product. According to those retailers, all these WiFi decoders are imported from Hongkong or Shenzhen. And this product appeared on the market earlier this year.


Obviously, no matter you sell or you use this gadget, you are against the law. But in today's China, There are so many grey zones that you can get benefit without being punished. This Chinese version Free WiFi is really a special result of today's China.

SARFT stops IPTV services in 14 cities of Guangxi

February 23,2010, Although SARFT (state administration of radio, film and television) and MIIT（Ministry of Information Industry Technology）have agreed to push ahead triple play service jointly in mainland China, IPTV service for telecom service providers still face “red light” in many areas. Just now, SARFT stopped the IPTV service run by Guangxi Telecom in 14 cities of Guangxi Province, a province in southern China close to Vietnam.

On February 9, SARFT ordered that Shanghai Television Station to stop provide IPTV signal source to Guangxi and Xinjiang Telecom, also they asked Guangxi Telecom must stopped their IPTV service and said the service is against current law. SARFT forwarded their request to the Guangxi local government. 3 days later, all IPTV services run by Guangxi Telecom in 14 cities were stopped, just before this Chinese new year.

It is not the first time to happen this kind of thing. Since IPTV services were introduced by telecom service providers in mainland China in about year 2005, SARFT basically does not want to cooperate. Only in a few cities like Shanghai, Haerbin, Hangzhou, under control of the join-venture company by local Cable TV service provider and telecom service provider, IPTV is officially provided to the public.

Not only SARFT does not want to cooperate with telecom service providers, telecom service providers also do not want Cable TV service providers have telecom services like VoIP, internet service. In recent history, conflicts like cutting cable of the other side, causing damage to equipment of the other side happened many times.

Video service is still the ace of cable TV service providers today in mainland China. Compared to big scale telecom service providers, video service is the only advantage for cable TV service providers. That is the reason why they are so nerves that some telecom service providers begin to provide video service.

It is a good thing that cable TV service providers are still blessed by government today. According to the most recent triple play policy, SARFT will play a major role in the first 2 years. SARFT still has the top responsibility to check all video services around mainland China. A new national cable TV service provider is under construction. There are still 2 years time left for them.

Hengtong builds southern manufacturing base in Dongguan

February 23, 2010, Dongguan, one of the largest optical fiber and cable manufacture in mainland China, Hengtong group (600487 Shanghai Stock market) just announced they will invest 250million RMB in Songshan lake industry zone of Dongguan city, Guangdong province to build their southern manufacturing base. In the future, Hengtong will mainly develop and manufacture new special fiber, cable, copper cable in this base. The predicated revenue will reach 400 million RMB each year.

Mr. Qian,jianlin, general manager of Hengtong pointed out that they would make Songshan lake base as their southern headquater. Songshan lake base will help Hengtong develop southern market, even southeast Asia market quickly.

With 1.5billion RMB market value, Hengtong now has nearly 18% market share in China's fiber and cable market. Their new fiber preform product will also help them gain more market share in the coming years.

China closes 136，000 websites

February 10,2009, According to Xinhua news agency, since last december, China 's government has closed 136,000 websites under the flag of clamping down internet pornography. MIIT（Ministry of Information Industry Technology）and its sub-branchs in each province play a key role in this clamping down.

According to government's data, up to now, they have checked nearly 1.8 million websites whose server locate inside mainland China， closed 136K unregistered websites and 126 accesee service provider. At same time, CNNIC (China Internet Information center) and 55 internet domain providers checked 13.5 million doman name, nearly 80% of all domain names in mainland China, stopped 12,000 domain name transfering.

China's government says that what they do is according to China's law, and it is helpful to clean the internet environment in China. The action is welcomed by the public since its start, but the public didn't notice the negtive effect of the action, or they daren't not critisized government.

Then what is the negative effect. That is there is no space for personal websites in mainland China in the future, that is it will be more difficult if you want to public your own opinion on internet, that is operating small websites will be more difficult.

Don't think that 136000 websites who are closed by government are all pornographic websites. Many of them are closed just because they didn't make the registration, or their original registraion deleted by government(They only allow enterprises to make registraion, not person). Also if a website want to have BBS or blog services, you have to satisfy many stricted requirements set up by the government.

Government's clamping down is really a disaster for many personal website owners. Somebody may want to move their website server to overseas provider, but considering the "Internet Great Wall" of China, that is not a good idea. It is very possible that their website can not be visited in China or become very unstable. .

No one doubts China's government has a good intention to do this clamping, but many times, a good intention also can lead to bad result. You cannot say, China's government is smart this time. To have all internet websites controlled by the government, maybe it is also another aime of this clamping down.

Emerging Chinese national cable TV service provider

February 9, 2010, For many years, Chinese telecom service providers have been lucky for not needing to compete with cable TV service providers. But their fortune may comes to an end in year 2010. A new national CATV service provider in mainland China is reported to be organized by the government.

From Xinhua news agency, high-ranked officers from MIIT（Minstry of Information Industry Technology）and SARFT（State administration of radio and film, television）have announced that government will adopt kinds of supporting policy to organize a new national CATV service provider in mainland China. This new CATV service provider will represent whole Cable TV industry to provide triple play service. Early than this announcement, it is rumored that China’s government will invest 20 billion RMB to organize the new CATV service provider.

Several weeks ago, China’s government announced the triple play policy officially. According to this policy, CATV services providers can provide telecom service, and telecom service providers can provide TV services in the future. Because China’s telecom service providers have much more resources than CATV service providers, there are 3 years protecting period for CATV service providers. In the first 3 years, Both Cable TV service providers and Telecom service providers can make some trial networks, but CATV providers can have more support from the government, such as they can provide VoIP service which only telecom service providers can do before.

In mainland China, Cable TV service are provided mainly by local companies. Each city, even each town has their own cable TV companies. Not like telecom service providers, there is not a vertical managing system them although they are managed by SARFT generally. But it is local government not SARFT who has stronger influence on these local cable TV service providers. Just because this, these small cable TV services have no advantages to compete with those national telecom service providers like China Telecom whose revenue is much higher than them.

During the past 20 years, SARFT has never given up to organize a national cable TV service provider. And they really organize several provincial cable TV service providers, such as Beijing Gehua Cable TV, Hunan Cable TV. They even build a national transmission network. This time, with the great support from central government, SARFT may finally have a national cable TV service provider. But without experience, without talented engineers, can they really compete with telecom service providers?

WTD boasts vertical integration advantage on PON transceiver

February 4, 2010， Wuhan, As the largest state-hold transceiver company, Wuhan Telecom Device (WTD)company also has the longest history in China's fiber optics industry. The fast growing company just published their first white paper to introduce their opinion on transceiver technology and their advantage on transceiver.

The first question, How WTD looks at GPON and EPON technology? With full line of EPON and GPON tranceivers, WTD believes that GPON and EPON will live together for a long period. Compared to GPON's technology advantage EPON does better job on product maturity and commercialization. GPON can not replace EPON in a short time.

The second question, what is the real advantage for WTD on PON transceiver? The answer is WTD is the sole Chinese supplier that can manufacture DFB-LD and APD chip themselves. WTD now can produce these chips 18K every day, and their manufacturing ability is still expanding. Few competitors have the supplying ability like WTD in China。

The 3rd question, What is the latest PON product for WTD? During last month's FOE show in Tokyo Japan, WTD demonstrated their 10G EPON Diplexer SFP+ transceiver. Many customers show interest on this product.

After nearly 30 years development, WTD shows stronger ambition on international market. They just opened Tokyo office last month, and next month they will come to San Diego again to attend OFC/NFOEC. Today's WTD is more active, with more energy, and more ambitious than many of their competitors.

More fiber optic news about China, Please visit www.cordacord.com

China Telecom aims at 20Mbps bandwidth per home in 3 to 5 years

February 2 2010, It is just reported that China Telecom will finish fiber access network upgrade in major cities in 3 to 5 years to bring 20Mbps bandwidth to all subscribers in big cities.

This fiber access network will be mainly a FTTB network, only in some developed areas, FTTH will become available. China Telecom will guarantee fiber connected to all commercial buildings and new residential buildings in major cities. For residential subscribers, their bandwidth will be 8Mbps to 20Mbps。In rural areas, China Telecom will connect fiber to each village in eastern China. In western China, 80% villages will have fiber connection. Based on this connection, China Telecom will provide 4Mbps bandwidth.

Compared to today’s popular 1M or 2M bandwidth service, the new 20Mbps bandwidth service is really a big leap. This bandwidth will provide great flexibility for China Telecom’s new services including IPTV. China’s government just turned on green light for triple play. China Telecom’s new 20Mbps plan should aim at this policy change.

Before today’s report, China Telecom already made some FTTx trial networks, especially in Shanghai and Wuhan. Last year, Shanghai Telecom announced to invest 6billion RMB to build fiber access network. Their aim is to realize 100M to each home, 1000M to each building. In year 2011, Shanghai will have 3million homes connected to 100Mbps bandwidth. For China’s optical vally, Wuhan also announced their FTTx project. Late August, Wuhan Telecom became the first service provider to provide 20Mbps residential bandwidth service.

Not only, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile also have their ambitious FTTx plan. For fiber optics industry, it is really exciting news.

More fiber optics news about China, Please visit www.cordacord.com