"The marketplace is the most powerful driving force for the improvement of telecom service,'' said Zhang Chunjiang, vice-minister of MII, during a forum on telecom service yesterday.

He said although China owns the second biggest telecom network in the world, the service level is relatively low.

The MII received 6,588 telecom sector complaints in 2000 and formally investigated 1,025 of them.

China Telecom ranks top in the complaints list with 732 cases under investigation. China Mobile follows with 163 complaints and China Unicom has 67 complaints under investigation.

Of the 1,025 complaints, 40 percent are related to charges and 35 per cent are about poor service, according to statistics from MII.

That the sector is monopolized by a small number of large organizations is the core reason for the high charges and poor service. This is demonstrated by MII statistics which show that most of the complaints are against China Telecom, which has a monopoly on fixed-line telecom service.

With the debut of China Railcom, owner of the country's second biggest fixed-line network, the monopoly of China Telecom will soon come to an end.

MII will carry on its policy of encouraging competition to ensure customers' rights, said Zhang.

The ministry established a complaint center for telecom customers in 1999. Starting from this year, the center will release customers' complaints every three months.

"The telecom sector should speed up reform and opening up to ensure a fully competitive market," urged Cao Tiandian, chairman of the China Consumers' Association.

The more the government protects an industry, the more complaints go to that sector, said Cao.

A fair competitive market will benefit not only customers but the healthy growth of the industry as a whole, he said.

(China Daily 03/13/2001)