Recently, Wang Xiaochu, who has always been low-key, changed his normal state and voluntarily disclosed his "perfect proposal" to the media after changing into the "hat" of the chairman of China Telecom: China Telecom and Netcom acquired Unicom's GSM network. Unicom said that Wang Xiaochu's suggestion was "just wishful thinking" and did not give the "former boss" face.
In fact, many insiders of Unicom are not surprised by Wang Xiaochu's "suggestion". As early as when China Unicom launched the dual-network co-construction plan, some people expressed doubts about its ever-changing strategy, and revealed that the company did have plans to sell GSM networks, and some high-value users were currently migrating to CDMA networks.
Yang Lu, a telecom analyst at Nuosheng Consulting, believes that based on the consideration of 3G licenses in the future, China Unicom can't get two 3G licenses, and it can only strengthen itself on the one hand, so China Unicom is most likely to sell G network.
However, will China Unicom really hand over the G network that it has worked hard for many years?
Dual-network strategy: attack GSM network inside and outside
For Unicom, the huge GSM user base of 85 million is a stable source of income for Unicom Group. G network not only shares the risk of developing C network, but also provides financial support for the development of C network. China Unicom uses "life engineering" and "pillar business" to describe C network and G network, so China Unicom will definitely not give up "pillar business" easily.
However, China Unicom's dual-network strategy is indeed facing embarrassment.
Insiders of China Unicom said that the dual-network strategy of China Unicom is to "tilt to the C network while taking into account the development of the G network".
"The risk of this strategy is that the slow development of the original excellent network will also reduce its ability to transport resources to the inferior network, which will easily lead to the development speed of the inferior network being lower than expected." Analysis of Bear Stearns, an international investment bank. "Once the inferior network develops to a certain scale, but its independent development ability is still fragile, and the competitiveness of the superior network continues to decline to a certain extent, which is not enough to promote the further development of the inferior network, both networks may be difficult to achieve sustainable development."
This is not just a theoretical inference.
At present, China Unicom has no time to consider the upgrade of GSM, and has no intention to develop GPRS, because the main funds will be used to develop CDMA. Therefore, the gap between China Unicom and China Mobile GSM network is getting bigger and bigger. Yu Xiaomang, former vice president of China Unicom, once said, "There is China Mobile ahead, and Unicom's GSM network will never catch up."
As there is no large-scale investment to upgrade the network, China Unicom's G network attracts more and more users in the low-end areas with low requirements for service content. However, users in this field are attracted not only by China Mobile, but also by PHS. It is doubtful whether they can keep it.
High-end strategy: one short step makes a long regret.
In addition to external pressure, CDMA, which China Unicom has been hoping for, is also causing trouble for GSM.
Unicom CDMA's high-end strategy is not successful. It failed to gain a firm foothold in the "altar" planned by McKinsey, so it had to put down the "high-end" shelf, readjust its market positioning and strategy, launch the business of "prepaid phone bills and renting mobile phones", attract users with a large amount of subsidies and take the low-end route.
According to the figures provided by China Unicom, 0/0% of users of C network/KLOC come from China Unicom's own G network, thus forming an embarrassing situation for China Unicom's C network to compete for its own G network users.
In addition to user resources, terminal resources also began to tilt to the low end of CDMA. At the beginning of this year, China Unicom began to collect CDMA-oriented "ultra-low-end" mobile phones on a large scale. There are more than 3 million mobile phones in this tender, and the average price is within 1000 RMB.
That is to say, for Unicom's GSM, it is faced with the triple attack of China Mobile, PHS and CDMA, and the situation is very difficult.
An investment consulting company pointed out that if China Unicom still adheres to the road of dual-network synchronous development, even according to the most optimistic estimate, by 20 10, the net present value of cash flow of China Unicom will be negative, with a capital gap as high as 1048 billion yuan. If China Unicom can't make an effective breakthrough in the coordinated development of dual networks in the short term, the development prospect of China Unicom is very worrying.
Wang Guoping, a researcher at Galaxy Securities, said in an interview with IT Times Weekly that the development of China Unicom in the past two years has proved that it cannot afford two networks (CDMA and GSM). Since it is very difficult, from the perspective of maintaining and increasing value, splitting state-owned assets may not be a bad thing for SASAC.
Dual-mode strategy: How far can the "world wind" blow?
When the road of dual-network integration is getting narrower and narrower, China Unicom has thought of the way of dual-network integration, which is also known as the "world wind" dual-mode strategy.
In Unicom's dual-mode strategy, dual-mode mobile phone and dual-mode mobile phone card are two different fronts. Yang Lu, a telecom analyst at Nuosheng Consulting, analyzed for this reporter: "Dual-mode mobile phones are designed to be compatible with mobile GSM users, seize high-end users of rivals and develop their own high-end users of C network; The dual-mode mobile phone card is intended to adhere to the dual-network users in China Unicom and gradually realize the transfer of G network users to C network, so as to prepare for the unified development of 3G services based on CDMA2000 standard in C network in the future. "
This is a very creative concept. Theoretically speaking, the dual-mode strategy is a good way to realize natural transition and solve the problems of dual-network coexistence and balance of resources that have plagued China Unicom for many years.
However, the senior management of China Unicom Group said that at present, China Unicom's dual-mode mobile phone business is not smooth, with high voice and few respondents, and it has fallen into a situation of "high is not low".
Dual-mode mobile phones are intended to compete for high-end users and attract GSM users to use CDMA 1X data services. However, one of the characteristics of the domestic mobile communication market is that most high-end users mainly focus on voice services and have little interest in data services; Fans of data business are mostly young people with low income and are very sensitive to price. Therefore, the demanders of data services do not match the high-end positioning, and dual-mode mobile phones with data services as their selling points are not easy to attract high-end customers of China Mobile.
The high-end is not good, and the low-end is equally difficult.
Although dual-mode mobile phones can switch freely between two mobile phone cards, they can't stand by at the same time. Users can only avoid missing calls through call forwarding, which costs 0.20 yuan/minute, which increases the cost of telephone calls for users. Dual-mode mobile phones have two cards, which inevitably involves the problem of monthly rent, and the cost has risen again; As far as the terminal cost is concerned, the dual-mode mobile phone is 15% ~ 20% higher than the existing CDMA mobile phone.
Dual-mode mobile phones have a bad start, and dual-mode cards bearing many expectations of China Unicom also face many problems, such as the price of terminal products and whether they can only charge single network fees. And the prospect is not clear.
Is GSM network going or staying?
Several strategies seem to have failed. Unicom's original intention of winning others' victory has not yet been realized, and others are already peeping at their own things.
65438+1On October 28th, SASAC held a press conference, acknowledging that the reform and reorganization of the central telecom enterprise was in the program stage. On February 3rd, Wang Xiaochu, general manager of China Telecom, put forward a "perfect plan" and sought the approval of the regulatory authorities for this transaction.
This proposal seems to have received a lot of support and approval.
On March 22nd, Bear Stearns, an international investment bank, announced in a research report that the GSM service of China Unicom is likely to be acquired by fixed telephone operators in the next nine months. According to the report, if this happens, it will greatly change the prospects of the rest of China Unicom's business, especially CDMA business. The brokerage firm thinks that the possibility of such industrial restructuring is as high as 75%.
Liu Bin, an analyst at BDA China, also believes that China Unicom can make some profits by selling G-net to China Telecom, which is beneficial to listed companies. On the other hand, China Unicom's centralized CDMA network can also make the C network bigger.
The senior management of China Unicom consulted the relevant leaders of SAAC. The spirit of SAAC is that China Unicom, as the product of China's telecom industry reform and the benchmark of telecom competition, is of great significance in its establishment and development. At the same time, however, the relevant leaders of SASAC also expounded their opinions on the restructuring of the telecommunications industry, saying that the development performance of each company is still an important consideration, and each operator should first focus on strengthening its own business.
Recall that a month ago, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) went to the front desk to hold a press conference to deny the rumors of Unicom's spin-off, but then the speculation about Unicom's spin-off intensified, but the relevant parties did not make any statement.
It is reported that the fate of China Unicom will be the result of the game between SASAC and NDRC. However, the relevant personnel of the Information Office of the National Development and Reform Commission said in reply to IT Times Weekly that they did not know about the split of Unicom, and stressed that "the affairs of large state-owned enterprises should still be managed by SASAC."
Several things seem to show that the evolution of the situation is likely to follow Wang Xiaochu's wishes.
An analyst believes that with the acceleration of 3G, China Unicom with C and G networks will be an unavoidable hurdle for telecom restructuring, while China Unicom with two networks is likely to be the breakthrough point of this telecom restructuring. From this point of view, it is not unreasonable to list Unicom as an important restructuring object in the second round of restructuring of the telecommunications industry. If the government wants to limit the number of licenses, then Unicom is undoubtedly the easiest target to be split.