Rewired: Economist

May 29th 2008 | HONG KONG

From The Economist print edition

The long-awaited reorganisation of China's vast telecoms industry begins

BY ANY measure—revenues, employees, customers—it is the largest industrial reorganisation ever. And, reflecting how business is done in China, it was announced in the most modest way, with a posting on a government website on May 24th. The country's telecoms industry, with nearly 600m mobile subscribers, 360m fixed-line customers and $244 billion in revenue, will be reconfigured. Six companies will be collapsed into three, each spanning mobile, fixed and broadband services.

China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator by subscribers, will merge with China TieTong, the smallest fixed-line operator. China Telecom, the country's biggest fixed-line operator, will acquire one of the mobile networks run by China Unicom, which will merge its remaining mobile operations with China Netcom, another fixed-line operator. A sixth operator, China Satcom, will be taken over by China Telecom.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Rewired: Economist