China's regulatory authorities are considering adopting an unbalanced management strategy to control the growth of different competitors in the telecommunications market. They want to encourage the development of smaller players and prevent unlawful competition, according to sources.
This strategy would allow the authorities to use different methods to control the growth of different operators.
"Under the plan, there would be more rigid control of bigger enterprises which have most of the market share, with much more freedom given to smaller players to encourage free and fair competition," said Zhao Le, general manager of China Unicom's Shanghai branch, China Telecom's only big competitor in the domestic market.
"So far, the plan has been sent to the State Council and is awaiting final approval by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) - the watchdog of the telecommunications industry," said Zhao.
He declined to predict when the act would be enforced.
Currently, MII adopts the same supervision standards to oversee different players in the market.
China Telecom and China Mobile Telecommunication Co - a subsidiary of China Telecom - control more than 80 per cent of the country's telecommunications market, which puts a lot of pressure on China Unicom to compete.
Zhao, who said the unbalanced control system was a common practice abroad, added that bringing in the new approach would depend on China's entry into the World Trade Organization. If that happens, foreign competitors would want access to the market and fair competition.
"We will continue our efforts to develop more customer-oriented products and improve our services," said Zhao.
Zhao said his company was to extend its domestic long-distance call service from the current 25 major cities to 197 cities in the country by the end of the year.
