Yesterday, in the press conference held in the information office of the State Council, the director of the Communication Development Department of MIIT Wen Ku said that the average speed of the fixed broadband in China is 4.25Mbps at present, in order to improve the speed and cut down the tariffs, MIIT would introduce private capitals into the competition, promote the upgrading of the old districts and strengthen the co-construction and sharing of the infrastructure facilities.
The shortage in market supply resulted in the high tariffs
On April 14th, during the economic situation forum of China, the Premier Li Keqiang put forward the question that the "tariff is high and speed is low", then MIIT responded that it would accelerate the 4G construction of the "broadband China" project and extensively promote the relevant work.
On the press conference of yesterday, Wen Ku said that MIIT has been working to promote the cut down of telecom tariffs by promoting the reform of telecom tariffs and encouraging competition. According to the statistics, the mobile traffic tariffs decreased 60% in 2014 when compared with 2011, and the broadband tariff decreased about 30%.
Wen Ku said, there’s still a certain gap between the decline and the social expectation and requirements of the users. Judging by the rules of market economy, the shortage in market supply is one of the reasons for the high tariffs.
Promote the sharing of communication infrastructure
For the insufficient supply, Wen Ku said that the regulators will mainly solve this problem by increasing investment.
"Since we just started 4G in last year, the benefit wasn’t shown yet, and the penetration rate should be further improved. There is still room for decreasing the cost and promoting full competition." According to his introduction, by increasing the investment in 4G construction, building the all optical network cities and extensive development of 4G, it would struggle to attract more mobile users to the 4G network. If the situation is good, it will break through the goal of developing 250 million 4G users in this year.
In the fixed broadband, MIIT will promote the reconstruction work of "replacing copper with optical fiber" to improve the network traffic capacity, and reduce the cost of traffic packets.
In the infrastructure construction, MIIT would like to promote the building of sharing mechanism, reduce the operation cost of telecom operators by promoting the co-construction and sharing of infrastructure facilities, therefore making room for the decrease of tariffs.
Reduce the tariff by competition
On the tariff issue, Wen Ku said that MIIT will introduce private capitals into the telecom market, promote the upgrading of the old districts, allow more than one operator in one district and promote the decrease of network tariff by co-construction and sharing of infrastructure facilities.
According to his introduction, MIIT has opened mobile resale services in 2013. In 2015, it will introduce private capitals into the local access market in more than a dozen pilot cities, allowing private capitals to participate in the family broadband services to strengthen the investment and promote the competition, at present, it has received applications from hundreds of enterprises.
In addition, promoting the upgrading of the old districts and allowing more than one carrier in one district is the next step of MIIT’s work. In this way, the citizens have more choices and would promote the decline of tariffs by competition.