Recently, there are media reports that a "national base station company", jointly owned by the three major telecom operators, has been finalized, with a registered capital of around 100 billion. The new company's super station, on an equal footing with the current level of three telecom operators. Yesterday, operators told the Beijing News reporters that the Ministry of industry and Commerce had organized three operators to meet this matter. The name of the company is tentatively named "National Tower company".

The relevant departments of the Ministry responsible person said yesterday, at present, the three basic telecom companies are studying the formation of a common communications infrastructure company, is responsible for coordinating the construction of communication tower facilities to further improve the level of telecommunications infrastructure sharing, but also help to reduce the construction cost of the industry, and ultimately benefit the telecommunications users.

The tower company is staggering

One executive said the company was not yet registered and the name of the discussion was roughly defined as "National Tower company". The company set up by new room, tower, stations and pipeline construction and maintenance, according to the lease, rent to the three operators.

However, the National Tower company is not responsible for the procurement and installation of communications equipment. Generally speaking, operators just rent the tower company's "base station address" (Infrastructure), and then install the communications equipment they buy from them. Therefore, the establishment of the National Tower company will not affect the purchase of the main communication equipment.

This approach can further solve the problem of sharing resources of pipelines and towers. With the large-scale construction of 4G network, the three operators are faced with a substantial increase in pressure on the construction site and the tower, the establishment of an independent station / tower company in favor of the three operators share the tower, room, site and pipeline resources, reduce network costs, and accelerate the speed of network construction.

As China is in the high tide of the construction of 4G network in the next three years, the volume of the National Tower company will be quite astonishing. The information from the device vendors, only China Mobile [micro-blog], is planned to build 500 thousand 4G base stations by the end of this year. China Telecom will have up to 250 thousand base stations this year. By the end of this year, the number of 4G base stations in China is likely to rise to as many as 1 million from the current 300 thousand.

It is understood that the new company will be jointly funded by three companies including China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, but China Mobile will have a higher shareholding ratio than the other two due to the large demand for site establishment. As for the personnel, it is not clear whether it is entirely from three operators at present.

Non operator lead

From the original intention of the establishment of the tower company, the government should hope to share the three operators of the tower and the machine room to reduce the cost of civil construction of the three major operators.

At present, the cost of infrastructure construction, such as the machine room, the tower and the pipeline, is about 10%-20% of the operator's wireless network. China Mobile now owns about 1000000 wireless base station sites, while China Telecom and China Unicom are less than half of China Mobile's wireless base station sites. In the 4G network planning, China Mobile is also far ahead of the 4G base station planning number of Telecom and Unicom.

Analysts say telecommunications and Unicom will be more likely to have access to infrastructure resources at low costs after the sharing of future iron and pipeline resources.

However, executives told the Beijing news that this was not three big operators. But by the state related departments led, the three major operators only cooperate with the participation.

The personage is also worried about the role that the new tower company can actually play. "The newly established company will not face the market competition, but also the nature of the central enterprise. The efficiency and quality of their affairs are worth worrying about. Don't let the common people pay for the monopoly. "

Previously, the three major operators have launched a shared co - construction cooperation. A report from the Ministry of industry and information shows that the share ratio of the three major operators of the new base stations was over 70% last year and 54% of the indoor base stations were shared.

In the decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on deepening the reform in a number of major issues, the direction of the reform of state-owned enterprises is put forward, including the active development of mixed ownership economy, and the reform of natural monopoly industries that continue to be controlled by state-owned capital. There have been a lot of speculation about a new round of telecommunications restructuring in the industry.

Yang Peifang, Secretary General of the telecommunications economic expert committee of the Ministry of industry and commerce, said that we should solve the problem with the new market economy instead of returning to the era of government monopoly.