Which broadband operator do you use at home?

My hometown is in the rural area of ​​Hebei. My broadband has expired. I have been using China Unicom broadband and binding a landline. Nowadays, everyone uses WeChat on their mobile phones and no longer uses landlines, so even if I bind it, I don’t use it. My parents are considering switching to mobile broadband because it is free and does not require binding to a landline, but the surrounding Internet speed is not good. So I am struggling to decide whether to switch or not.

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released statistical data: as of the end of December 2017, the total number of fixed Internet broadband access users of the three basic telecommunications companies reached 349 million, with a net increase of 51.33 million households throughout the year.

It is understood that the number of China Telecom's fixed-line broadband users continued to grow rapidly, reaching 133.53 million in 2017, an increase of 10.41 million from 2016, an increase of 8.5%. China Mobile reached 112.687 million, with a net increase of more than 35.06 million users throughout the year. China Unicom's fixed-line broadband users only increased by 1.303 million, reaching 76.539 million.

Moreover, judging from the changes in data each month: China Telecom has grown steadily except for a few months; China Unicom's monthly increase was 910,000 in January, and it decreased by 960,000 in December. The net increase for the whole year was only 1.3 million, which is far lower than the increase in any month of China Mobile.

In 2016, China Mobile surpassed China Unicom in the number of fixed-line broadband users. In 2017, the gap was widened and it was approaching China Telecom to take the championship title.

The fixed-line broadband market will be quite exciting in 2018. When will China Mobile's user base exceed that of China Telecom? How will China Telecom hold its ground? How will China Unicom narrow the gap? Of course, this is a good thing for users.

It is reported that the communications industry market will usher in a new year of great development in 2018, with an estimated net increase of 100 million mobile users and 50 million household broadband users throughout the year.

China Mobile: Winning over users to build a digital home ecosystem

Low tariffs are China Mobile’s killer feature.

Secondly, China Mobile has accumulated and stabilized a lot of users by bundling mobile users with free gifts. For example, in 2017, China Mobile conducted a large number of broadband marketing campaigns for mobile phone users. For example, as long as the monthly mobile phone consumption of users reached 58 yuan, China Mobile would give away 20M broadband.

In 2018, the number of China Mobile broadband users is expected to reach 130 million, the number of Mobaihe and Hejiaqin APP users is also expected to exceed 100 million, the number of smart gateway users will reach 80 million, and there will be 200,000 broadband installation and maintenance personnel to provide thoughtful services.

Recently, China Mobile announced the winning candidates for the 2018 smart home gateway centralized procurement: the first batch of procurement is divided into two packages, one for 2.875 million smart home gateway model 2 devices; the other for 8.625 million smart home gateway model 3 devices.

In addition to the increase in home broadband users, China Mobile is also committed to building a digital home ecosystem.

In 2016, China Mobile established the Digital Home Cooperation Alliance. The Digital Home Cooperation Alliance will rely on the market of hundreds of millions of broadband users, coordinate more than 600,000 offline channel resources, establish a win-win profit-sharing mechanism, and build a new digital home ecological system with partners to bring new digital home life experiences to the majority of users.

Today, the number of members of the Digital Home Cooperation Alliance has increased from the original 24 to 68, covering multiple fields such as security monitoring, smart home appliances, environmental health, etc., and more than 110 smart hardware products have been connected, initially building an alliance product library.

In 2018, the number may increase to more than 100, and the number of smart hardware products connected to the network will increase to 300. A complete solution integrating hardware and services will be formed in the security, health, energy saving, control and other sub-sectors, and a digital home ecosystem will be initially established.

China Telecom: Integrated operation aims to increase broadband by 25% in 2018

In 2017, China Telecom upgraded its integrated services to "4G unlimited package + 100M optical broadband + 4K Tianyi HD", which were well received by the market as soon as they were launched. Currently, nearly 50% and 80% of broadband users choose to integrate three and two services respectively.

On this basis, China Telecom continues to extend into emerging Internet business areas, injects intelligence into traditional communication convergence services, uses smart gateways, Tianyi HD set-top boxes, and smart home apps as the entrance to smart life, and accelerates the construction of a smart home ecosystem.

On December 19, 2017, China Telecom released smart home products, including smart gateways, Tianyi HD set-top boxes, smart home APPs, smart speakers, smart BAG series, etc., forming a smart home product family.

At the meeting, Lv Pin, deputy general manager of China Telecom's marketing department, introduced that China Telecom's smart home solution uses Tianyi gateway, Tianyi HD set-top box and Smart Home APP as the three major entrances to smart life. It forms an ecological closed loop based on smart networking, Tianyi HD, home cloud, video calls, smart home, smart speakers and other services, and serves users with richer services and diversified terminals to meet users' most basic, most urgent and most frequent needs, and accelerate the construction of a smart home ecosystem.

At present, the Smart Home Industry Alliance led by China Telecom has attracted 170 partners including Huawei and Xiaomi to join, jointly promoting the upgrading of home entertainment and smart home consumption. Converged operation has brought more than 100 million smart home users to China Telecom, and injected strong competitiveness into broadband business.

Just last month, at the 9th Members' Meeting of the China Telecom Terminal Industry Alliance, China Telecom announced its new strategic goals for 2018: 30% increase in mobile users, 25% increase in broadband, and 65 million smart homes.

China Unicom: How to ensure that users do not churn

As mentioned at the beginning, China Unicom is facing the price impact of China Mobile's broadband. In 2017, China Unicom's broadband development was not going well.

The impact of mixed-ownership reform and the changes in personnel organization it brought, as well as the full focus on developing 4G, have distracted attention from developing broadband.

Despite this, China Unicom has managed to increase the broadband popularization speed to over 20M, and to over 50M in major cities. All users who meet the conditions for speed increase can upgrade for free. The company has also significantly increased the speed of its main broadband products, raising the main speed to over 50M for all and to over 100M in major cities.

However, China Unicom launched the "King Card Broadband" in early December 2017, which has not yet been rolled out on a large scale, but its slogan "No monthly rental fees, no box fees, no TV fees, only 1 yuan a day, no money if not used" shows China Unicom's determination to win back users. Moreover, "King Card + King Card Broadband" is similar to China Mobile's "Mobile + Broadband" bundled marketing.

In addition, China Unicom has done quite well in the field of home Internet, mainly promoting high-bandwidth content and application products with video as the core, driving users' bandwidth upgrades; taking Smart Wo Home as the starting point, it has comprehensively deployed home smart gateways to provide home customers with full-service and scenario-based application solutions; it has promoted broadband, video, application and other home Internet convergence products to promote mutual development.

In terms of detailed experience, China Unicom was the first in the industry to propose "dual channels", providing two independent network bearers for IPTV services and broadband Internet access, with independent bandwidths and non-interference rates, which can ensure the quality of users' IPTV high-definition videos while ensuring a smooth Internet experience. This effectively solves the problem of network freezes when a family is watching videos, playing games, or downloading at the same time.