Broadband monopoly probes

China Telecom Corp Ltd and China Unicom (Hong Kong Ltd), two of China's major telecommunications companies, announced on Dec 2 that they will substantially raise their broadband speeds and lower broadband costs over the next five years.

The announcement came in the wake of a government-initiated probe into monopolistic practices a month earlier. But other broadband operators - those that previously bought bandwidth from China Telecom and China Unicom at high prices and then sold them to individual customers – said there are no substantial rectifications and no timetable to break the broadband monopoly. What they announced is actually a promotion of their own businesses in a disguised form.