Operators return to the pipeline to fight: China Telecom and China Unicom "join together" to catch up with China Mobile
When network resources, terminal industry chain support, and user scale all lagged behind China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom chose to stay together to face the competition with China Mobile.
On January 13, 2016, China Telecom and China Unicom held a signing ceremony for a strategic cooperation agreement on "Co-construction and Sharing of Resources to Improve Customer Service Quality" in Beijing.
According to the agreement, the two parties will cooperate in five major areas: network co-construction and sharing, promoting six-mode "all-network" terminals to become national standards, improving network and Internet quality, market-oriented innovative business cooperation, and international roaming business cooperation. strategic cooperation.
Among them, cooperation in network co-construction and sharing and six-mode "all-network" terminals were launched at the end of 2015.
As of November 30, 2015, China Mobile had 825 million mobile users, with a net increase of 18.55 million, and 4G users were 287 million; China Telecom had 190 million mobile users, with a net increase of 10 million, and 3G/4G users reached 1.4 billion; China Unicom has 287 million mobile users, a net decrease of 13 million, and 3G/4G users are 180 million.
The sum of China Telecom and China Unicom’s cash, base stations and users all lags behind that of China Mobile.
At this signing ceremony , the operators of both parties stated that they will "build a new format for industry development by opening and sharing various resources including networks, businesses and services, and exploring cooperation at all levels such as business and capital."
"In fact, the in-depth cooperation between China Telecom and China Unicom has just begun, and the obstacles in cooperation cannot be underestimated.
Saving tens of billions of money
It is worth mentioning that China Unicom Chairman Wang Xiaochu, General Manager Lu Yimin, Deputy General Manager Shao Guanglu, China Telecom General Manager Yang Jie and Deputy General Manager Yang Xiaowei all attended the signing ceremony. This is also the history of operator cooperation. A rare scene
"It's really serious.
" A Northern Telecom person told reporters: "Recently, the group issued documents to all provinces, requiring implementation of cooperation.
” The document shows that the group requires all provinces to actively promote the sharing of existing network resources and maintenance resources with an open attitude, share excess network facilities with each other in a timely manner, and effectively implement the sharing of operation and maintenance resources.to network planning, construction and maintenance.
At the same time, a deep sharing cooperation group for China Telecom and China Unicom network construction has also been established.
But on the other hand, under the current environment, there are many obstacles to in-depth cooperation between China Telecom and China Unicom.
A China Unicom department director who participated in the planning and design once told reporters: "Although the opinions of the two leaders are highly unified, it will be more difficult to implement it in provinces and cities.
"Due to the long-term "Southern Telecom, North China Unicom" pattern, the contrast between the strengths and weaknesses of China Telecom and China Unicom in each province is very obvious, the resources are seriously unbalanced, and the right to speak when cooperating with each other is unequal.
Moreover, there are various interests involved behind network construction, so it is conceivable that in-depth cooperation is difficult.
The headquarters of the two operators have considered these situations.
In order to prevent the local leading companies from being inactive, in the current cooperation mechanism, the companies of both parties in each province will summarize their needs to the group, which will make overall planning and report once a month.
Materials provided by people familiar with the matter show that the sharing scenarios, sharing models, general categories of resources, inter-network roaming, network transformation, preliminary settlement and incentive plans for network sharing between the two parties have been formulated. The next step is network optimization, customer service collaboration, Collaborative procurement solutions are also being negotiated.
In addition, in order to promote terminal sharing, China Telecom and China Unicom have also established a joint formulation mechanism for terminal roadmaps, and hold joint meetings every six months to discuss the finalmeet end-related technical requirements and build a new cooperation ecosystem with the mobile phone industry chain.
"Nowadays, pipelines, optical cables, and computer room facilities are all open and shared, and just pay. In the past, when the two sides competed, payment was not open, and everyone wasted a lot of resources.
" The above. Introduced by telecom professionals.
In fact, there are varying degrees of resource redundancy in each province of China Telecom and China Unicom, so that the group level has no idea how many resources each province has. Sorting out these redundant resources is also one of the purposes of this cooperation.
The aforementioned China Unicom person said: "If they can be fully shared, the utilization rate of base stations, transmission, pipelines, and optical cables can be improved, and tens of billions of funds can be saved every year.
" At the same time, China Unicom can use it. China Telecom has rich network resources, and China Telecom can also benefit from China Unicom's terminal industry chain and international roaming business.
Shared business hall
"In some places where cooperation is relatively close, the resource sharing between the two companies has been one step closer.
" A Sichuan Telecom person revealed to reporters: "In Sichuan, China Telecom and China Unicom have begun to try it in counties and towns." Business halls are shared.
" Previously, Sichuan Telecom and China Unicom signed an in-depth cooperation agreement on January 11. The two parties share more than a thousand sites and nearly 10,000 kilometers of pole roads.
In the trial of business hall sharing, the two business halls have each other's LOGO, and both can handle telecom and China Unicom services at the same time.
Although the three major operators have previously cooperated with external partners to build business halls, operators have never tried to share business halls.
In August 2015, after the three major operators changed managers, Wang Xiaochu, the former chairman of China Telecom, was transferred to China Unicom as chairman, and some provinces began to experiment with business hall sharing.
"Basically, there are two business halls in large business districts in every place. Cooperation can significantly save costs." Many operators told reporters: "Basically, Northern Telecom and Southern Telecom. China Unicom's business halls are all operating at a loss, and the money they earn is not enough to cover rent, water, electricity, and decoration costs.
”
In the 2G era, operator business halls were almost everywhere overcrowded. During this period, operators Businessmen built a large number of business halls.
Taking cities as a unit, the three major operators have hundreds of business halls in each city, as well as a large number ofMarketers.
The huge business hall resources are also one of the reasons why operators are regarded as "asset-heavy enterprises".
But after entering the 3G era, with the saturation of customers and the popularization of online business processing, the passenger flow in business halls decreased rapidly, the demand for business halls decreased, and most business halls became negative assets.
Although operators tried to transform their business halls, the results were not obvious.
If you try business hall sharing, you can reduce the operator's marketing expenditure.
"Shared business halls will definitely reduce some unnecessary business halls. As a result, the redundancy and inefficiency of marketing personnel will also surface.
" A long-term telecommunications company. Consulting service experts told reporters: “Operators need to find new positions to place redundant personnel or terminate the contracts of outsourced employees, so layoffs are inevitable.
”
At this stage, considering the operator’s state-owned enterprise background, Layoffs are not on the agenda.
“This is a sensitive topic, and perhaps for this reason, the issue of business hall sharing was not publicly mentioned at this conference.
” The aforementioned Sichuan Telecom person said: “However, With further strengthening of cooperation, the sharing of business halls and channels will become the norm.
”
Return to the pipeline competition
Different from the major strategies released in previous years, this cooperation between China Telecom and China Unicom almost did not mention the Internet business.
In the past five years or so, the three major operators have all been trying Through strategic transformation, we will explore new revenue from the Internet field to break through the ceiling of the telecommunications industry.
This includes China Telecom’s “One, Two, New Three” and China Mobile’s “Three Curves”. /p>
In August 2015, after the three major operators changed managers, they no longer mentioned "transforming the Internet."
At the end of 2015, China Mobile proposed the Internet of Everything strategy at the Guangzhou Partner Conference , according to people familiar with the matter, "China Mobile has made it clear that it will 'return to pipeline competition', and the telecommunications industry will set off more intense price and cost competition than before.
”
In 2016, China Mobile will invest more than 100 billion yuan in mobile phone subsidies, discounts, channel fees and other terminal subsidies, and plans to directly reduce the price of VoLTE (4G voice service) terminals from about 1,500 yuan to 399 yuan, which means that China Mobile can quickly migrate a large number of 2G and 3G low-end users to 4G networks.
Currently, China Mobile still has more than half of its 2G users.
The aforementioned telecom consulting expert analyzed, "According to China Mobile's strategy, by the end of 2017, the vast majority of China Mobile users will have 4G terminals that support VoLTE.
By then, most 2G users will be able to withdraw from the network. , 900M and 1800M high-quality spectrum can be reused, and China Mobile can even launch free voice services, which will be difficult for China Telecom and China Unicom to resist.
”
In addition, at this press conference, the operator's top executives were asked about the "merger" rumors again. The helpless General Manager of China Telecom Yang Jie emphasized: "This cooperation has nothing to do with mergers and reorganizations. .
”
