The State Council has deployed to promote the speed increase and fee reduction, and operators have spared no effort on the road to benefit the country and enterprises

In the continuous promotion of network speed-up and fee reduction, operators have spared no effort to implement it. In 2020, the speed-up and fee reduction gave profits of approximately 46 billion yuan. In 2021, they will further promote network speed-up and fee reduction, improve network and service quality, and promote the construction of 5G and gigabit optical networks.

The focus of speed increase and fee reduction is on four aspects

The State Council's executive meeting listed four tasks, mainly involving promoting the construction and application of 5G and gigabit optical networks, guiding telecom companies to further reduce fees, and rectifying behaviors such as commercial buildings monopolizing broadband access and forcibly raising prices.

The meeting called for vigorously promoting the construction and application of 5G and gigabit optical networks. Carry out gigabit optical network upgrades and home transformation, promote cities to basically have fixed and mobile "gigabit to the home" capabilities, and achieve gigabit optical network coverage of more than 200 million households this year.

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To implement the relevant arrangements, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently issued the "Dual Gigabit Network Collaborative Development Action Plan (2021-2023)", proposing to basically build a "dual gigabit" network infrastructure that fully covers urban areas and qualified townships within three years, and achieve fixed and mobile networks that generally have "gigabit to the home" capabilities.

The meeting also proposed guiding basic telecommunications companies to further reduce the average broadband and dedicated line charges for small and medium-sized enterprises by 10%, and to implement preferential rates for special groups such as the elderly and the disabled. At the same time, resolutely rectify the monopoly of broadband access and forced price increases in commercial buildings to ensure that end users enjoy the benefits of increased speed and reduced fees.

Operators increased speed and reduced fees in six years, giving profits of nearly 500 billion

"Speeding up and reducing fees" has been emphasized by the country in recent years, and it has also become the direction of operators' efforts. In promoting the action of speeding up and reducing fees, the three major operators have continued to take measures such as enhancing network capabilities, improving network speeds, lowering network charges, and launching preferential plans.

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The “speed up and fee reduction” policy has been implemented for six years, and this year is the seventh year. Relevant data shows that the three major operators have given up nearly 500 billion yuan in profits since 2015. In terms of network speed increase, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the proportion of fiber optic users increased from 34% to 93%, and the proportion of 4G users increased from 7.6% to 81%, which is much higher than the global average.

In terms of tariff reduction, the average tariffs for fixed broadband and mobile data traffic in my country have both dropped by more than 95%, and various measures have benefited more than 1 billion communication users each year. Operators have effectively improved the people's sense of gain through concrete actions.

Speed ​​increase and fee reduction directly drive a substantial increase in traffic consumption. As of March this year, the average mobile Internet access traffic per 5G user was about 50% higher than that of 4G users, and the unit price of 5G traffic dropped to 4.4 yuan per GB, a decrease of 46% in the past two years. In 2020, the average monthly mobile Internet traffic per user (DOU) reached 10.35GB, more than doubled from 2018.

Network speed increase and fee reduction will be further promoted in 2021

The starting gun for speed increase and fee reduction in 2021 has been fired. On the basis of further fee reductions, operators have taken multiple measures to reduce corporate production and operation costs through empowerment of technologies such as big data and cloud.

While carrying out the speed-up and benefit-for-enterprises action, China Telecom is also carrying out the enterprise cloud migration action, launching preferential services of "broadband + cloud + application", and providing free experience of cloud products such as cloud conferencing, cloud hosting, and cloud desktops, reducing broadband and dedicated line charges and the threshold and usage costs of digital transformation for small and medium-sized enterprises.

While "reducing fees", operators are accelerating "new infrastructure" to ensure that there are enough resources to "speed up". Among them, China Telecom is accelerating the large-scale deployment of 5G SA, expanding 5G coverage from urban areas to county towns and developed townships, and further strengthening the depth of urban areas. In 2021, gigabit optical networks will cover key areas of cities. At the same time, we will further promote cloud-network integration, integrate many new technological innovation elements such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and big data into 5G new infrastructure, and create a new type of digital infrastructure.

In 2021, operators will further promote 5G co-construction and sharing, which is good news for consumers and will help better coverage of 5G signals, thereby better serving the general public.