China expected to issue MVNO licenses in December

November 15, 2013 Leave a comment

China expected to issue MVNO licenses in December

Staff Reporter

2013-11-15

The year of 2014 is likely to mark the opening of China’s telecom market to the private sector, as the government is expected to issue licenses to the first group of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) in December, the tech news website of the Chinese portal Tencent said.Some 100 companies applied for an MVNO license after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology began accepting applications earlier in the year.

As China Mobile, which has been moving slower than its rivals in exploring this area of business, is expected to announce the list of companies to rent its network and provide MVO service next week, sources told Tencent that the government will probably issue MVNO licenses in December.

Since late October, China Unicom and China Telecom announced a total of 21 companies they will work with in the MVN business, including mobile phone distributors, electronics chains and online retailers.

The sources said China Mobile was initially not interested in the MVN business, as the company, which is the largest of the three state-owned operators, worries about competition from new operators.

The company’s attitude transformed after potential MVNOs expressed their intention to work with rather than compete with the existing telecom operators, the sources said.

Partnerships with MVNOs, especially local brands that are better received by consumers, will allow telecom service operators to sign up more subscribers, the newspaper said.

For electronics retailers, such as Gome and Suning, owning an MVNO license will give them an edge in its competition against online retailers.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is aiming at improving the competitiveness of the state-owned operators by introducing the private sector to the telecom business.

It also hopes to expand the telecom sector and boost consumption in this area as the country tries to build an economy driven by domestic demand, the newspaper said.

Filed under TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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