China's three basic telecom operators had invested 259 billion yuan in network construction and Internet speed upgrade this year till end-September, and the amount will reach or exceed 435 billion yuan by the year-end, said an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) on Thursday.
Zhang Feng, the MIIT's chief engineer and spokesman, said the three telecom giants will expand the coverage of fiber-to-the-home network to exceed 130 million families and increase the number of 4G bases stations to over 1.5 million by the end of this year. He added that China Mobile (CHL.NYSE; 00941.HK), China Telecom (CHA.NYSE; 00728.HK) and China Unicom (CHU.NYSE; 00762.HK; 600050.SH) had basically completed the work of reducing charges for fixed-line broadband access and cut the average prices of 50M access and 100M access by 30 percent and 20 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, they have cut the international roaming fees by more than 80 percent. Besides, the three telecom giants all began to implement the mobile data carry-over policy this October, which allowed the unused monthly data under the monthly package committed by the mobile service subscribers to be carried over for use till the end of the following month. According to Zhang, the three telecom giants made a good start for the implementation of Speed Upgrade and Tariff Reduction policy, which was set by the State Council in May.
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