While India has given licences to many new telecom operators, and the Department of Telecom wants even more foreign players to be allowed to enter via the 3G arena, China is consolidating its telecom services sector before it doles out 3G licences.
During the last three years, the Indian government has granted 143 licenses to 20 companies, including some property developers. Of these, some 120 licenses were issued this year to 16 companies.
In sharp contrast, AFP reports that China plans to create three telecom giants. Once the restructuring is finalised, the government will issue three licences for third generation (3G) mobile services.
The objective of the restructuring is to bring about three competitors of roughly comparable strength, according to a China government statement. It is also aimed at redressing the imbalance between rapidly growing mobile phone operations and the fixed line business, which (like India's) is actually seeing declines in subscriber numbers.
Under the plan, the world's biggest mobile operator China Mobile will acquire fixed-line operator China Tietong Telecommunications Corp. China Telecom, an operator of fixed lines, will take over a mobile network of China Unicom, the smaller of the nation's two key mobile phone operators, and most business of smaller player China Satellite Communications Corp.
The remainder of China Unicom will be encouraged to merge with fixed line operator China Netcom.
The arrival of the 3G licences, which allows more various advanced functions such as the use of broadband wireless data via mobile devices, is set to usher in a buying spree of new network equipment, state media reported on Tuesday.
The revamp will probably take five months to complete, the Beijing Youth Daily said, citing a research note by Guotai Jun'an Securities, which has close contact with the operators.
In a sign of how lopsided the market is, official figures showed that by the end of last year China's fixed line users fell by 2.3 million to 365.4 million while mobile phone subscribers surged by 86.2 million to 547.3 million.
China Mobile, the world's biggest mobile network operator by subscriber numbers, raked in 87.1 billion yuan (12.5 billion dollars) in net profits in 2007, twice as much as China Unicom, China Telecom and China Netcom combined.
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