China Telecom, Unicom ask to end antitrust probe

Dylan Bushell-Embling
05 Dec 2011
00:00

China Unicom and China Telecom have both offered olive branches to regulators, in an attempt to close an antitrust probe into their internet access pricing practices.

In separatestatements issued on Friday, the operators formally requested that the investigation be suspended.

Both operators acknowledged that there was “room for improvement” in their pricing practices for leased line access services provided to ISPs.

They both said they had conducted internal reviews of their operation, and had discovered a “relatively wide pricing variation” in their charges for these services.

The operators agreed to “earnestly implement the enhancement initiatives” suggested by the NDRC. All of the preceding direct quotes appear verbatim in both announcements.

China Unicom and China Telecom also acknowledged that there was room for improvement in terms of the quality of interconnection between backbone network operators.

The antitrust arm of China's NDRC launched an investigation into the operators' broadband access businesses last month.

At the time, an NDRC deputy director accused the operators of using their dominant market position to charge higher access prices to competitors and favor those not in competition with them.

According to the Commission, China Unicom and China Telecom control two-thirds of the nation's China's broadband access market.

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