Shanghai IPTV subscribers will reach 800K

8/28/2008, IPTV subscribers in Shanghai will reach 800K by the end of this year. Since early time of this year, the average IPTV installation is about 3000 homes, and by today, there are already 500k IPTV customer in Shanghai.
What is the real reason behind such rapid developments? Since day one of IPTV development, Shanghai Telecom set up the service according to the customer request. By fully using the new technology supported by IPTV, such as multi pictures in the same screen, High defination quality, text news services, the IPTV services attract customers.
During the Olympic games, IPTV provide better service than CATV, they can provide at most 8 pictures in the same screen. IPTV also can provide different information in time. Also the customers can avoid the advertisment so they can guarntee better experience.

Rumors about China Telecom CDMA bid

8/18/2008, A big rumor is circulating in China's mobile communication field. The rumor is about Huawei, but the result happens to ZTE.
It is said Huawei will get 70% share by using ultra low price strategy in the coming CDMA bid of China Telecom. ZTE and Shanghai Bell Alcater will only have the other 30%. Because of this news, ZTE's stock price has hit the 2 year low point recently.
Several security companies have confirmed that Huawei really would donate many CDMA equipments, but they denied that Huawei will get 70% market share by this. They pointed out ZTE was the dominator in 2007's CDMA market in China. ZTE even has 50% CDMA market share in the world. Compared to ZTE, Huawei's share is much lower.
Some media also reported that Huawei only gave a 600million target price in this 10billion bid. They said that Huawei would increase price after they got the order. This is a strategy that Huawei has adopted several times. Huawei has a good relationship with China Telecom, even they cannot get a 70% market share, their share must increase in this bid. Also Huawei's advantage is based on WCDMA. But that kind of market still isn't clear. It is sure thing that Huawei will try to increase their market share in CDMA market.
The bid result will be published as early as August 20th.

Who leads 40Gbps Market in China?

8/15/2008, several days ago, Huawei is reported to win the first 40Gbps equipment bid in China Telecom. Huawei will provide 40Gbps equipments for China Telecom's Shanghai-Wuxi transmission system. The news invoked hot disscussions in some telecom online forum in China.
The focus of the discussion is not about 40Gbps technology or market, but it is about Huawei's recruiting policy from fiberhome in Wuhan.
Why people cares about Fiberhome? Because in 40Gbps field, It is them, not Huawei, who made the first field deployment in China. Their 40Gbps project is part of China's national 863 hi-tech project, and they began the R&D on 40Gbps equipments early than Huawei.
When Fiberhome invested in 40Gpbs, Huawei still thought that was a futuere project. Today, everyboday knows 40Gpbs market is mature, then we suddenly find Huawei is leading again.
it was said many fiberhome's R&D engineers left for Huawei, that is maybe the reason behind Huawei's success in 40Gbps. But nobody can give evidence that Huawei's 40Gbps technology is from Fiberhome.
Maybe fiberhome is little heard overseas, as a state-hold company, it has longer history, better R&D resources than Huawei in some field. But Huawei's advantage is that they can grab all the necessary resources they need in the right time.

TD Experience on Beijing Olympics

8/11/2008, To provide 3G service is a promise the Beijing Olympic committee made before the games, now How about the performance of China's TD-SCDMA?

A local reporter wrote in his article:” I tried several times to enter the mobile TV channel, it once stopped work temperately because of too many users, when I can enter the channel, the video quality is still not good enough, sometimes there are delay and buffering. "

Beijing Mobile said the poor video quality this reporter met maybe because of the poor network quality and the moving speed at that time.
An engineer in Beijing Mobile pointed out that today's TD-SCDMA can only provide 85Kbps bandwidth, only when they upgrade to TD-HSDPA and when they provide 1Mbps bandwidth, the video quality can be guaranteed.

During the games, Beijing Mobile provides 100K TD handsets to volunteers and 200K to overseas traveller for renting service.

Accelink goes to IPO

http://www.csrc.gov.cn/n575458/n776436/n804920/n2466277/10731236.html

for their IPO information, pl, visit this link, but there is only Chinese version.

8/5/2008， One of the largest optical component company in China, Accelink(Wuhan)’s IPO was approved by CSRC(China Securities Regulatory Commission). They can go public in Shenzhen small and middle sized stock market as early as this September. Accelink is the first company who successfully goes public this year in Hubei Province. In all component industry in China. Accelink is the first independent company who goes public.
According to Accelink, they are the No. 11 biggest optical component manufactures around the world, whose revenue last year was about 487million RMB. Their main products are optical amplifiers, fiber connectors and WDM components.
Accelink’s products have been purchased by Fiberhome, Huawei and ZTE. They also sell their products in US market through themselves and some distributors. They also have some big OEM partner in US.
Wuhan Research Institute is the largest shareholder of Accelink. Zhongtian, a fiber cable public manufacture in China is the second largest shareholder of them.
Accelink will initiate 40million shares this time. We predict they can get 200 to 300 million RMB through the IPO. How will they use this money? Accelink didn’t give the answer. But It is very possible that they try to merge with their brother company WTD using this money. WTD is a transceiver company with nearly 28 years history. Corning once was WTD’s shareholder, but later they sold all their shares back to Wuhan Research Institute. The gossip about the merge of two component companies under Wuhan Research Institute has been spread for many years. We can’t see any obstacles for this merge after the IPO. After the merge, they will be certainly the largest optical component company in China. And they really have the ability to enter the top 10 fiber optics company around the world.

CMBB Mobile TV will support Beijing Olympics

7/28/2008, according to a recent Mobile Multi media broadcast TV summit held Beijing, a SARFT officer said the CMMB mobile TV network had covered 37 cities in mainland China. The CMMB service will be launched commercially in 2009. SARFT aimes to cover more than 300 cities in coming years.
For the coming Olympic games, SARFT build the CMMB network in all Olympic cities in mainland China. They will guarantee the service can be provided during the Olympic games.
On the other sides,many cellphone manufactures in China are now working on their TD/CMMB cellphone. They have to shipped them to China mobile before Aug. 6th. These handsets will be send to some guests of the olympic games as a gift.
These CMMB cellphone manufactures incluce ZTE, Legend and some others.

Fiberhome announces FTTx milestone

7/23/2008, The 3rd largest Chinese communication equipment manufacture, Fiberhome in Wuhan today announced their FTTx equipments have been sold one million lines by the end of this June. Fiberhome also points out that there is a huge increase on sales compared with the same period in last year. Fiberhome's FTTx equipments have been deployed in nearly all provinces in China, and on overseas market, they got customers from Thailand, Russia, Italy, Austrila, and Latin America, North Europe etc.
Fiberhome began to research on FTTH technology since 1995. Now they mainly focous on EPON technology with more than 20 Chinese patents on EPON technology. Their EPON equipments have passed through the certification of big carriers in China.
In April 2005, the build the first FTTH experiment network in Wuhan.
Fiberhome didn't tell which kind of FTTx technology represented by this announcement.
Up to today, they are the only equipment provider in China who provides the market data on FTTx equipments.

The Wireless broadband service for Beijing Olympics

7/9/2008, There will be free wireless broadband network services for travelers in Beijing before the end of the Beijing Olympic games. You can go to this website http://www.bj.wicity.cn/1/en/index.php to find the account or password, or I can just list them for you here,
　Account1：wxbj1 PW：wicity　Account2：wxbj2 PW：wicity　Account3：wxbj3 PW：wicity
Today, you can find such a news from:http://asia.tmcnet.com/news/2008/07/09/3537025.htm
the title of the news is "ChinaTel Group Successfully Launches Broadband Wireless Internet Access Network in Beijing for CECT-Chinacomm Communications Ltd."according to the news, The wireless network is live and provides Internet access services across approximately100 square kilometers of metropolitan Beijing, including the 2nd Ring, 3rd Ring, CBD Commercial Zone, Financial District, Zhong-Guan Village, Wangjing Economy-Technology Development Zone, Xuanwuchun Village and Yizhuang,
It is not the first time to know there will be wireless broadband service for BJ olympics, but it is first time for me to know about the company of Chinatel and Trussnet.
In this March, a local media has reported about the Beijing Wireless city project. The report basicly introduced the same content as that in today's news release.
About CECT-Chinacom, it was once very famous for its fixed wireless 3.5GHz broadband project, but because the network and service cann't compete with those big carriers, the CECT-Chinacom nealy disappeared after quite a bit of fanfare . Bbecause of its government background, it still finds its way to live through. Today, we even found it has more overseas background. I only hope the new CECT-Chinacom and the Chinatel behind them really has the ambition and capability to find opporunity for WiMAX in China.

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.