China to merge three major communication networks in five years

China to merge three major communication networks in five years

BEIJING, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- China plans to merge three majornetworks, namely Internet, telecommunication network and broadcastingnetwork into one in the five years, said a telecommunications experthere Tuesday.

The merger of three networks has been included into the 11th Five-Year Program (2006-2010), which is still in the making, said SongJunde, professor at Beijing University's School of Post andTelecommunications, at a forum on telecommunication networks.

However, with the broadcasting network under one supervisor andthe other two under another, their integration is expected to receiveresistance from vested-interests.

As proposed in the five-year program, China is to enhance theconstruction of its broadband, digital television and next generationinternet, so as to achieve their merger in the future, said Song.

The merger, Song said, will optimize the structure of China'stelecommunications industry and facilitate the upgrading and reformof the networks.

The prospect of a network merger has boosted the network-relatedmarket. Statistics with the China Center for Information IndustryDevelopment show that China's network equipment market reached 22.77billion yuan (about 2.84 billion US dollars) last year, up 33.1percent over the previous year.