China to push telecoms overhaul in '08

China will push a long-waited reshuffle of the country's telecoms industry in 2008, creating players that operate both wireless and fixed-line services to address unbalanced competition, according to the industry's regulator.
"Operating a single type of business not only goes against technology trends, it has also fostered serious imbalances in the telecoms industry's development," Wang Xudong, the minister of information industry, said on Thursday.
China has four major telecom operators -- China Telecom, China Netcom, China Mobile and China Unicom -- and each monopolizes one or two services.
An overhaul of the sector, dominated now by the four players that have evenly split mobile and traditional fixed-line services licenses between them, is also expected to precede the issuance of licenses to offer faster third-generation services, which will represent a boon for equipment vendors such as Motorola.