China's Telecom Market Expects Further ExpansionChina's soaring telecommunication market will continue to expand against the backdrop of the significant telecom restructuring in the West.Backed by booming domestic demand and Beijing's successful bid for the 2008 Olympic Games, China will maintain an annual GDP growth rate of at least seven percent, said Wu Hequan, an IT specialist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. With China's forthcoming entry into the World Trade Organization, the telecom sector will undergo reforms and charges on telecom services will be further reduced, said Wu. He predicted that the growth of China's telecom service revenue and the expansion of the telecom network will outpace the country' s GDP growth by 100 percent and 300 percent respectively. In February this year, the Ministry of Information Industry predicted that the capacity of China's telecom market will double in five years, with the total number of phone users hitting 500 million by 2005. This goal is expected to be reached ahead of schedule, maybe in 2003, said sources with a recent Asian IT forum held in Shanghai. Statistics show China's fixed asset investment in the telecom sector rose by 93 percent on an annual basis in the first half this year, but it only accounted for 30 percent of the total 262.7 billion yuan (32 billion U.S. dollars) budget for the year. "Fixed asset investment in the sector will continue to grow at an annual rate of 30 percent in the next few years to come," said Wu. Meanwhile, China will speed up construction of network infrastructure that supports wide-band connections and IP services. "The launching of the third generation mobile communication network and the development of the NGN (next generation network) will bring about new opportunities for telecom equipment manufacturers at home and abroad," said Wu. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |