80M Chinese cable subs to get interactive set tops.........
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Chinese cable TV plans leap into Internet
Reuters
BEIJING -- A Chinese official with a reputation for shaking up telecommunications says he plans to challenge a monopoly by telephone companies on Internet service by delivering high-speed access over cable television networks.
Fang Hongyi, chief engineer for cable networks under the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), said on Tuesday his bureau was souping up its infrastructure to provide cheap, fast Web access in three to five years.
``We're going to take the Chinese people into the Internet age in one shot,' Fang told Reuters in an interview. He said SARFT, which oversees China's loose network of cable operators, had begun small-scale tests in a handful of cities.
Fang was quick to concede that gargantuan political and financial barriers face the plan.
For starters, it will need approval from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) -- the telecoms monolith whose territory the plan threatens.
``We'll need several billions of dollars to do it,' he added.
If successful, however, it would not be the first coup by the scrappy southerner, who spearheaded a public crusade last year to break up MII's state telephone giant China Telecom, and won.
The project has something else in its favour -- an eye-popping 80 million cable subscribers in China.
China is now estimated to have four million Internet users.
The core of the cable Internet service would be a 15-city Internet backbone planned by China Network Communications Corp (CNCC), a Shanghai-based government joint-venture born this year from the rubble of telecom reforms.
From that backbone, SARFT's loose network of cable TV operators would pipe the Internet the final leg into homes.
The service would address the two most common complaints by China's Internet users -- high fees and snail pace connections, Fang said.
Subscribers would be offered high-speed service for a one-time fee of 500 yuan ($60.40) plus 50 yuan per month, he said. Subscribers to China Telecom's Internet service pay about 200 yuan per month.
SARFT would allow people to set up Internet service provider (ISP) companies on its network for a fraction of what China Telecom charges ISPs to tap its network.
``People could set up an ISP in their apartment,' said Fang, who envisions a ``citizen net' ISP for every 500 people.
One foreign telecoms analyst said the project faced steep technological hurdles.
``It's a new idea that you can run Internet Protocol technology through fibre without expensive equipment,' said Duncan Clark, partner with BDA in Beijing.
Special equipment would have to be installed to manage the flow of digitial traffic, while cables to homes would have to be beefed up to handle two-way traffic, he said.
But he said the cable industry's infrastructure was a ``sleeping giant' that could give telephone companies a run for their money -- particularly in rural areas, where cable TV is more prevalent than telephones.
Fang said the plan had support from Premier Zhu Rongji and President Jiang Zemin.
``The MII wants strongly to stop the plan, but it's unstoppable,' he said. |
