Market Opportunity of China Telecom 3G Toward 4G - A Social-Technical Analysis for its Future Development

Abstract

In the Information and communication Technology (ICT) field, the success a new player will face is the challenge for the opportunity of new market development. China's mobile subscribers grew by 9.93 millions to 1.132 billions in February 2013.The convenience of communication prompted China’s growth, but there is little information available in literature about how it happened and what the next development steps will be for the China Telecom Industry. The purpose of this paper is an attempt to picture the future growth path of China Telecom market opportunities from 3G toward 4G and beyond, including viewing this from the angles of telecom/internet e-commerce regulation development; globalization of values; and telecom universal services in China. By investigating the development of TD-SCDMA networks as well as the TD-LTE and FD-LTE current status and also the mobile-TV/ cloud computing trends of China, it is estimated that the country’s settings of objectives for telecom growth may drive fast new market developments. Both technology and management growth of the three operators will mature. This paper relies heavily on the ideas of economics, governmental regulations and social responsibility from Professor: Joseph Eugene Stigliz (a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Science 2001). In this research, the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) will act as an important tool to understand the Chinese way of new technology implementation, and will use the TD-SCDMA networks case study as a model. The ANT, Michael Serre’s work influenced Bruno Latour and others like Michel Callon. This paper is based on work done in China since 2001 in Beijing by the author. It draws on industry and academic sources, interviews with friends from telecom industry elements and governmental policy making departments in China. Due to the time frame, difficulty of access to any of the actual decision making processes, and frequent ‘off-the-record’ sources this type of research faces acute methodological challenges. This paper suggests that the convergence across internet, telecommunications, TV broadcasting networks etc. will form a new market beyond the traditional telecommunications industry. The pervasion of the huge popularity of the internet will continue to involve all aspects of society as China presses forward to establish its innovation credentials.