Oppertunity

CHINA

The development of the telecom industry in China over the past decade has been most impressive. From a time in the early 1990s when a single government department provided all the country’s telecom services, and did so over a network of limited scope and poor quality, the country is now in many respects a leader regarding its telecom infrastructure. In addition, competition has been introduced across the board and the industry is being opened to foreign investment. This has all been accomplished by a developing country with a multitude of other political, social and financial problems to solve.
The scale of the achievement can be seen from the fact that, in recent years, around 30 million fixed lines and 50 million mobile lines have been added annually. However, these figures should be viewed in the context of the 1.3 billion population and that developments are taking place from a very low base. Nevertheless, the country has made great strides in building its basic telecom infrastructure.
Much still remains to be done. Despite recent improvements, teledensity remains fairly low, while value added services that take advantage of the expanding infrastructure are still lacking. Broadband services are not well established and use of the Internet is still limited, inhibited to some extent by the controls established by the government over Internet content. In addition, the country has not enacted a comprehensive and transparent telecom law, despite one being promised for many years.