Minister confirms telecom restructuring in progress

Wang Xudong, the Minister of the Information Industry of China, has confirmed that the restructuring of the country's telecom industry is in progress. This is the first time a Chinese top official made such an announcement, sources reported.

However, Wang declined to give the details of the restructuring scheme and the specific time to issue the 3G licenses.

In February, the Shanghai Securities News reported that China has worked out the preliminary restructuring scheme for its telecom industry, which will allow three Chinese telecom operators, namely China Telecom<728>, China Netcom<906> and China Mobile<941> to run the full-range telecom services.

It is also revealed that China Unicom's<600050><762> CDMA network will be merged to China Telecom, and its GSM network to be merged to China Netcom.