Tencent Holding, China’s internet company, said it has found “preliminary solutions” to resolve the We-Chat issue with the three state-owned mobile carriers.
Speaking at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, Ma Huateng, chairman of the Shenzhen-based company, claimed that Tencent had worked with operators for the past month to resolve the situation, according to Bloomberg.
“With rapid development of the mobile Internet, we are now facing a big issue, which is the relationship between mobile Internet companies and the traditional wireless carriers,’’ Ma said. ‘‘[We] should work together for mutual benefit.’’
Operators have been leaning on OTT messaging providers such as Tencent to provide compensation for the strain the services place on their networks and the impact on SMS revenues.
Ma’s remarks came weeks after the MIIT publicly announced that the regulator would step out of the debate and let the cellcos and the OTT players sort it out themselves.
Seeing their voice and SMS revenues continually eroded by WeChat, the three cellcos, namely China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom were reportedly urging the regulator to intervene and demanding compensation for the high strain the service places on network resources.
“In the past month, we worked with the operators and figured out a lot of preliminary solutions,” Ma said. “I don’t think this is a big issue.”