Co-construction and sharing is one of the keywords in telecom industry in recent years, but before China Tower Company was established, implementation of this policy wasn’t known by the outside. Many reasons have resulted in this situation, probably because of the uneven development of the three major operators, China Mobile is engaged in the ultra-conventional network construction, while the other two are advancing gradually; but more importantly, the operators still regard the network coverage ability as the means of differentiation competition.
But this phenomenon may change radically in 2015. Recently, the MIIT and SASAC officially released views on promoting co-construction and sharing of telecom infrastructure in 2015. This can be regarded as the most strict implementation views, which not only put forward specific requirements, but also clear mechanism of examination and punishment.
In this document, the tower company was formally incorporated into the leading group and office of national telecom infrastructure co-construction and sharing, the provincial branches were also incorporated into the provincial co-construction and sharing coordination mechanism.
MIIT requires that the three basic telecom operators should not build towers and other base station facilities since January 1st, 2015 in principle, as well as indoor distribution systems in subways, railways, highways, airports, station and other key places. The tower company shall enhance its ability of construction, and meet the three basic telecom operators’ demands in a reasonable balanced and effective way.If the towers can be shared,then no new ones shall be built in principle.