China aims at MNP

7/8/2008, according to local media, the new Industry Information Ministry （MII）is considerting to bring Mobile Number Portability policy to mainland China.

During a meeting hold last week, MII officiers were discussing the possibility of one-way MNP in China. The so-called oneway MNP means that only subscribers from China Mobile can transfer to China Unicom or China Telecom. China Mobile dominates Chinese mobile communication market with nearly 70% market share. The introduction of oneway MNP is just to limite this domination.

According to the media who reported this first, even MII finally agrees on MNP in mainland China, there is still at least one year to carry out this policy. Lots of preparation and trail experiment need to be done at first.

Why Pakistan forbide Chinese cellphone?

7/7/2008, According to Pakistan media, all Chinese cellphones are forbiden to sell in thisi country. The reason is that part of cellphones from China use the same IMEI(International Mobile Equipment Indentification) code. According to Pakistan Telecom Authority(PTA)'s request, each cellphone must have one unique IMEI. Recently, PTA found hundred of cellphone users who bought Chinese cellphone couldn't use their cellphone because their cellphone had the same IMEI which has been locked because it belonged to a stolen cellphone. In China, there is no this kind of limitation and there is a strong black industry on manufacturing this kind of cellphones. According to a survey by Sina.com, 36.02% persons have used this kind of cellphone, and more than 66.58% persons thought they would like to purchase this kind of cellphones, In China, this kind of cellphone has a special name: Village Cellphne. Because of huge market request and the strong immitation behavior in Chinese industry, also because of the inability of the government, this Village Cellphone has become a cancer on the cellphone industry in China.

iPhone:Still no deal with China mobile

7/6/2008, On june 26, Mr. Wang, jianzhou, CEO of China Mobile once said the biggest blockade for China mobile to introduce iPhone service had been removed. But according to local media, there is still no a timetable for iPhone service in China. Apple Inc. once demanded 20%-30% revenue from China Mobile on this iPhone service. But China Mobile won't accept such kind of demand. For Apple, they have used this kind of revenue sharing method in many countries, they also won't like to surrender to China Mobile easily. It was said Apple had agreed to give up the revenue on voice service, but they still demand 20%-30% revenue from iPhone's data service in China Mobile. The two sides still cann't make a deal on this.Although there is no formal iPhone service in China, but there already are many iPhone users in China. They got the smuggled iPhone and then decoded it. Somebody said there were at least 400K iPhone's in China Mobile's network. At the sametime, some similar products appear in the market, If iPhone cann't go to China's market quickly, maybe it will lose this market.

China Telecom introduces its IPTV progresses

7/03/2008, China Telecom today announced its IPTV subscribers had reached 943.6 thousand. New added subscribers in this year reach 378.9 thousand. These customers are all in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanxi, Guangdong areas, Shanghai has neraly 50% total market share with nearly 500 thousand IPTV subscribers. China Telecom pointed out there already was two business models for the IPTV deployment in China. The first one is towards high-end customers, the second is towards enterprises, governments. An good example for the first model is the cooperation between Shanghai Telecom and Shanghai Media group. Shanghai Telecom is good at internet service providing, Shanghai media group has the licence for video services. From May 17, 2008, the two companies has introduced HD-IPTV services, they now can provide one HDTV channel and over 200 hours VoD contents. 900 customers have choosed this service, and 2000 more customers are waiting for installation. The bandwidth requiremnt is 12Mbps for this application. China Telecom take advantage of ADSL2+ technology to increase the bandwidht. They are also makeing experiemnt on PON technology. For the 2nd model, China Telecom has cooperated with CCCP's some local organizations to provide remote education throuth their IPTV network. Using this method, they also developed some IPTV customers in the rural areas.

Let more optics replace copper

5/5/2008, A friend of mine who works in Shanghai Telecom told me, “Let more optics replace copper”(or Optics advance and Copper backward) was a very hot topic in China Telecom today. Many local China Telecom branches are eager to replace the copper network with new PON network. They even fund the PON project by selling the old copper network equipments.
“Let more optics replace copper” is a concept introduced by Mr. Wei leping, CTO of China Telecom. In the FTTH forum hold in Beijing this March, Mr. Wei talked about FTTH again. And this time, he really showed some different ideas.
First, He pointed out that FTTH should become a national strategy. He also said he once introduced FTTH and 4G mobile communication to the leaders of China. But the politicians chose 4G instead of FTTH. Secondly, Wei said that without IPTV service open to telecom service providers, there is no real FTTH development in China. Thirdly, he thought that China Telecom can provide bandwidth more than 50-100Mbps to subscribers. As I know, He once said 30Mbps was enough for China Telecom. And the fourth problem, there are some negative ideas about FTTx inside China Telecom. Some officers are more familiar to copper network than optical network. Anyway, by the concept of “Let more optics replace copper”, there has been already a very good environment for optical products suppliers in China. The first beneficiaries are those fiber cable manufactures. When can we see that PON equipments suppliers, even component suppliers get profit from these? That will be the real success of this concept.

China Mobile builds wireless community in Shanghai

4/18/2008, Information committee of Shanghai city government, China Mobile Shanghai branch, yesterday signed a cooperation contract to promote wireless community in Shanghai.
Shanghai Mobile says they will build 5-10 wireless community this year, Pudong district and Changning district will lead the way. Shanghai mobile introduces the future wireless community service will not be free.
According to Shanghai mobile, they can use GSM, GPRS, TD-SCDMA wireless broadbrand technology for this purpose. They have one of the biggest wireless network around the world, full experience, technology advantage.

ZTE :Wimax will become new backbone of revenue

4/15/2008， According to Mr. Yuan,wei, WiMax global director of ZTE, he thinks that the revenue from WiMax can be compared with the revenue from CDMA in ZTE in 3 years. Last year, ZTE’s revenue from CDMA is over 10 billion RMB.
Yuan points out the WiMAX terminal will be in commercial application next year, then WiMAX will get 20% market share of total wireless market.
Last year, ZTE has already signed a bill with Sprint Nextel on WiMAX terminal. The order is over 100million USD. This year, ZTE has got several WiMAX orders in Africa.

Xiaochu Wang talks future

4/9/2008, according to local media, chairman and CEO of China Telecom，Mr. Wang, xiaochu talked about the possible shuffle of China telecom service providers in a recent meeting.
Wang told the media that they still didn’t know if they would buy the CDMA network of China Unicom. But he thought that China Telecom would use 3 or 4 month to finish the reorganization. Also they can provide wireless service in 3 months.
Wang also said they would consider to issue new debt or new A share to satisfy the financial request. By now China Telecom only has 30.8% debt capital ratio which provide big room for them to issue new debt.
Wang also pointed out that they would use different service to compete with China mobile. They would use their advantage of fixed network. By today, China Telecom has 8million WiFi user. To merge this WiFi network with future mobile service, China Telecom are sure to bring better service to their customers.Even without this shuffle, Wang still thinks that the transformation of China Telecom can keep their growth. Last year, although traditional voice service went down 9.6billion RMB, but there is 14.3billion RMB increase on non-voice business. China Telecom still has big increasing capability on broadband service.

230Gbps bandwidth connects Netcom with the world

4/1/2008, According to China Netcom, they have total 230Gbps bandwidth to connect to the overseas network. Netcom has three sea cable landing location, which is Shanghai and Qsingdao., Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou three international bureau, eight land cables who connect to other countries. Today China Netcom already has a international Mesh network. On March 27, Vietnam telecom and Netcom build together Sino-Vietnam Pingxiang international land cable.

New minister of Industry and Information Ministry

3/17/2008, The national people's conference today voted Mr. Li, Yizhong as the first minister of the new Industry and Information Ministry. Mr. Li graduated from Beijing Petro College in 1966. He began to work in 1967 first as a worker, then engineer, deputy manager of workshop, deputy chief engineer, general manager. From Dec. 1984 to July 1987, he was the manager of Qilu Oil and Petro company of Chinese petrol and chemistry group. From July 1987 to August 1997, he was the deputy general manager of Chinese petrol and chemistry group. From August 1997 to April 1998, he was the chairman of Yizhen chemistry and fiber Co. Ltd. In April 1998, he became the general manager of Chinese petrol and chemistry group. In Feb. 2002, he became the chairman of Chinese chemistry and petrol group. In year 2003, he became the genaral secretry of SASAC. From feb. 2002, he became the general director of state administration of work safety. He is famous for his work in this position in China.

The price of optical cable and fiber reduces 40%

3/14/2008, according to three professonal industry association, the cable branch of associton of electronic components, cable branch of electricity products, cable branch of communication association, compared to year 2002, the price of optical fiber and cable has reduced 40%. 31 suppliers are surveyed this time, they has more than 80% market share of Chinese market. The survey shows that:
Price of G652 fiber reduces from 160RMB/KM to 80RMB/Km Price of G655 fiber reduces from 400RMB/Km to 230RMB/KM
but the price of material PE increase from 7500RMB/ton to 13500RMB/ton.

Bye bye MII

3/11/2008， According to the new organization renovation of Chinese government, the industry managing function of National Development and reform commission, the total function except nuclear electricity of nation defense science commission, Minister of information industry, information office under state council will be merged into a new ministry: Industry and information ministry. The chief function of this new ministry will be:

Make plan , strategy and standard on industry development;
Monitor the everyday work of the all industry;
Promote innovation on important equipment and technology
Manage the communication industry
Promote the information application
Guarantee information secure of the whole country

The establishment of this new ministry belongs to a bigger organization renovation in China. The renovation is for improving the efficiency of government. But don’t expect it will soon have good result on communication industry.
First, it doesn’t merge the function of state-owned assets supervision and administration commission of the state council (SASAC) which is the large share holder of all 5 services providers in China. Without SASAC, I don’t think this new ministry will have any big difference with the former MII。
Secondly, it doesn’t merge the function of SARFT which is responsible for the radio and television, film business. The communication industry is converging, except in Chinese government.
From my opinion, I think an organization like FCC is more important than such kind of organization renovation. Also the market open policy is more important than the reshuffle of the five carriers. Usually, after every renovation or reshuffle, there will be a long stagnant period, then this time, how long will it be?
The leaders of China look the information technology very important, but I think they don’t understand how important and how to use this information technology.

one more Huawei guy makes suscide

I am sorry to write this again, but it really happens again. In 12:20AM March 6, F2 cafeteria of Huawei Bantian R&D base , another Huawei employee named Zhang, Liguo made suscide. He jumped from the 3 th floor and died at once.

Local police has said Zhang died of suscide, but didnot disclose the reason. Also they don't think the death is because of hihs work in Huawei. Mr. ZHang is in his 36 age this year, he worked in software department of Huawei. And he joined Huawei only in the November 2007.

Another Huawei employee made suscide

2/26/2008, Beijing time, 13:25 in Chengdu, the biggest city in west China, a young man made suscide. He jumped out from the 4 th floor of Tianfu software park, where Huawei Chengdu R&D center locates. When ambulance car arrived, the man was dead This is not the first time Huawei employee makes suscide, last year, there were two other cases, both in Shenzhen

According to local media, the guy just graduated in 2006 from a Chengdu University. Before he made suscide, he just came back from overseas business. Somebody said he made a big loss in stock market.

Feedback to the comments

Thanks to your interest on this blog, for your problem between Datang telecom and Datang mobile, let us look at back their history.

In year 1993, the post & Telecommunication institute was divided into three parts: China Academy of Telecommunication Technology,(CATT) China Academy of Telecommunications Research and Planning China Academy of Posts Research and Planning.
at the same time, Xi`an Datang Telecommunication Co. Ltd. was established based on 10th institute. Xi'an Datang specially developed on PBX switch at that time.
In 1998, Xi'an Datang developed GSM900/1800 system, the same year, Datang Telecom Technology Co., Ltd was established and then it ' s A-shares began to be traded publicly.
In year 1999, Datang group was established, Datang telecom and other research institutes of CATT was also merged into Datang group.
In year 2000, it was Datang group who introduced TD-SCDMA in ITUT.
In March 2002, Datang Mobile was established as the sign of the mature of TD-SCDMA. Datang Mobile headquarters in Beijing, with one subsidiary in Shanghai and one branch in Xi’an. Datang Mobile is dedicated to the research and development of TD-SCDMA. But because there is not a real TD market, there is in fact no revenue for Datang mobile for many years.
Because Datang telecom loses money for many years, also because of the 3G concept in stock market, Datang group has begun to merge Datang mobile with Datang Telecom.

For the problem about What technology are they going to use: GPON or EPON?
I can say except Huawei, maybe ZTE, all others are using EPON, because it is cheaper. There is one exempt, Former Photon technology's Beijing R&D center once worked on BPON, they were later purchased by RAD. There is also some others who work on ethernet FTTx solution like Cisco's.

China will invest 70billion on 4G research

2/19/2008, Professor Zhang, Ping is the member of “New generation broadband wireless mobile communication network” project team in China, he also joined the work of 4G trial network in Shanghai. According to Professor Zhang, the project is a 15 year future technology developing project in China, Chinese government will make huge investment on this project. The government will invest directly 20billion RMB, at the same time the government also will organize enterprises to invest 50billion more. This investment will more than the investment on TD-SCDMA.
The Shanghai 4G trail began from year 2001, finished in year 2006, and cost more than 100 million RMB.

China Telecom uses PON to rebuild damaged network

2/18/2008, The big ice and snow in southern China brought China Telecom a huge loss, but there is also good news. That is China Telecom prepares to use PON network equipments to rebuild the damaged network.
This is said to be in line with the “Optic advances and Copper backwards” strategy of China Telecom. China Telecom will install PON ONU in some big villages, so also transform the old narrowband copper network to new broadband fiber network in the rural communication network. Through this, China Telecom can optimize its network, increase its bandwidth providing, lower CAPEX and OPEX. Traditionally, China Telecom liked to use small PDH terminals to build the rural access network. Compared to PDH equipments, PON is gaining more and more advantages.

What will happen in this March?

2/14/2008, Next month, new term Nation People’s Congress (NPC) will be held in Beijing. One of the most important thing of this conference will be the reform of government organization. For me, I care about if the MII will merge with Sarft(The state administration of radio, film and television), if big 5 carriers reorganized again.
For the first thing, it is only a guess. Convergence has been the trend around the world. China should not lag behind this trend. Also China government is considering merging many different departments into one more functional department. It was said the new merged department would be more effective.
For the second thing, some financial institutions including UBS, Morgan Stanley have predicted it could be happened in this March. The most possible plan is that Unicom is divided, both China Telecom and China Netcom will have part of Unicom, China Mobile will acquire China Tietong, so all carriers will be all-service carriers.
2008 is the 30 years anniversary of the “Reform and open to the outside in China”. Many people guess there will be some big reform activity. Could it really happen? Let us wait.
One good thing maybe is today, China government finally announced they would adjust the roaming charge of mobile service after a criticized public hearing. Compared to the old standard, mobile customer will have at most 71% reduction on roaming charge in the future.

Huawei organizes optical network R&D team in Wuhan

2/14/2008, It is not the first time I heard about this, but only this time I can confirm its existence. This is the research institute of Huawei in Wuhan, a city who has the name of optical valley in China. Wuhan is also the hometown of Fiberhome, the No. 3 fiberoptics equipment manufacture in China and many important components manufactures like WTD, HG Genuine.
Wuhan Research Institute (WRI) introduced the first commercial fiber system in China. And since Huawei entered this field, many engineers of Huawei are from Wuhan. But for a long time, Huawei didn’t need to set up a R&D office in Wuhan. Why today they change their mind?
I can’t fully understand the decision of Huawei this time. I wonder their aim is to lower their R&D cost further, also they hope to attract more engineers from Fiberhome and WRI. Fiberhome and WRI has some advantage on 40Gbps application and DWDM technology compared to Huawei.
Another reason, maybe Huawei hopes to attract more component engineers. I need further information to confirm this. Before Wuhan, Huawei has set up a R&D office in Chengdu. They competite with Alcatel Bell there on SDH system engineers.

How much can a Huwei employee earn?

2/13/2008, Below information is abstracted from some internet BBS in China.
A：I have worked in Huawei for 7 years, before I left there, I could earn 300K RMB a year. The Bantian base of Huwei is like a prison, the information security policy made us insolated from outside. Employees of Huawei always talked about Huawei. Also some old employees got a much larger salary compared to their work. I am happy I leave that company, Now I can have a normal life.
B: I have come to Huawei for nearly 3 years. Last year for the first time I got the inside stock shares of Huawei, this year I got some more shares. All these shares worth 350K RMB now. I think those people who leave Huawei are not really good employees. When I came to Huawei, there is a female colleague. She didn’t work hard and got a D review score, so she left Huawei herselvs. I heard that she entered Moto later.
C：I have a classmate in Huawei who has worked 4 years there. Last year his revenue is about 250K. By now, for a master student, the entry level salary is 5500RMB each month, after one year, he can also have some special final prize award which worth 10K to 100K. D: Compared to Cisco and Erission, Huawei’s salary is attractive also. Take an example, for a graduate student, if He enters Cisco, he can earn 7800RMB a month, and he can get 13 months salary each year, but no other awards. If you can work in Huawei more than 5 years, you can earn more than a manager in Cisco.