China Unicom is in the process of setting up China’s first nationwide ISP, which it is calling Uninet, as it positions itself to become the country’s top telecoms operator following the breakup of ex-monopoly China Telecom into four companies.
The State Council recently approved Unicom to be the country’s fifth internet operator with a separate international access channel. This followed hard on the heels of its being given permission to set up a nationwide CDMA mobile phone network, and of it taking over the country’s top nationwide pager operator.
Our internet scheme to set up a converged network nationwide is ambitious and even unprecedented, Liu Yunjie, Unicom’s chief engineer told the official media. The Uninet, with a unified design from the backbone to its branches, will be able to provide customers with a full range of voice, data and graphics services, he said.
Existing fixed-telephone, wireless and internet networks are separate and managed by different operators. But Liu said Unicom is negotiating with the railway, power and cable TV sectors to link their special networks with Uninet.
As a first step, Unicom recently launched a trial Internet Protocol (IP) telephone service in 12 cities. Next, it plans to provide line leasing services for domestic internet service providers (ISPs) and operation platforms for internet content providers (ICPs). It will also provide a nationwide virtual private network (VPN) service as one of its key internet businesses.
The official China Daily said China Unicom could well become the country’s most powerful telecom operator within the next few months as it develops its new nationwide businesses at the same time as ex-monopoly China Telecom is being broken up into four different companies.
The paper quoted experts as saying the government is cultivating Unicom to be competitive against international telecom giants once China joins the World Trade Organization and opens up its telecom sector.
