Triple Play Acceleration Highlights Inter-departmental Cooperation Efficiency
Triple Play has recently become a focal point in the industry. After experiencing some setbacks and difficulties, Triple Play is showing strong signs of accelerated development. Whether it is Wuhan establishing a Triple Play joint venture, Shenzhen incorporating Triple Play into its "12th Five-Year Plan," or Ningxia Radio & TV completing its equity buyback, a series of actions have made people truly feel that the Triple Play process has quietly picked up pace.
As a Triple Play pilot city, Wuhan has been making frequent moves recently. The establishment of the Wuhan Triple Play joint venture marks the city's official entry into the substantive implementation stage of Triple Play. In addition, the head of Ningxia Radio & TV Network signed an agreement with Cinda Real Estate to buy back equity, laying the foundation for Ningxia to achieve the integration of the telecommunications network, broadcast television network, and computer communication network.
Triple Play is a livelihood project, but due to the departmental interests of various parties, it has been difficult to achieve substantive progress. At the beginning of the year, the State Council's vigorous push for Triple Play can be said to have injected a "shot in the arm" for its development. Triple Play is inherently a good thing for the country and its people, but it was stranded due to departmental disputes, repeatedly delayed and becoming a headache for all parties. However, this situation is improving as cooperation awareness among all parties continues to grow. From 2010 to 2012, as the pilot phase of Triple Play, many pilot cities finally took substantive steps by the end of 2010 amid expectations, releasing positive signals for advancing Triple Play development.
Take Shanghai as an example. The Triple Play pilot in the region has been fully launched for nearly a month. According to the pilot plan, by 2011, 3.5 million households in Shanghai will have "fiber-to-the-home" coverage; by 2012, urban areas in Shanghai will basically have fiber-to-the-home capability, with home broadband access speeds reaching 100 megabits per second and wireless broadband networks achieving citywide coverage; by 2015, Shanghai households will generally obtain 100-megabit broadband access capability. It can be seen that as Triple Play continues to deepen, users will be able to enjoy the convenience of networking and high-quality information services in their daily lives, thereby improving the efficiency of terminal and network usage, achieving positive interaction between the two, and stimulating the relevant departments of Triple Play to enter a virtuous development track and enhance cooperation awareness.
Although pilot cities are accelerating their pace of development recently, the road to Triple Play is still long. Some industry experts say it will take at least three to five years before economic benefits can be seen. Under such circumstances, how the radio & TV and telecommunications departments broaden their cooperation areas and enhance cooperation awareness becomes particularly important.
At the current stage of two-way entry, one party entering the other's original territory will inevitably have a certain degree of adverse impact on departmental interests, but this is not the mainstream. Both major departments and even all parties in the industrial chain should instead see the vast market opportunities brought by Triple Play. Therefore, all departments should recognize the potential market prospects of forming more new business formats through the cross-integration of core businesses, thereby abandoning short-sighted behavior and truly making win-win cooperation the foundation for enterprise and departmental development.
Triple Play is not simply network and service convergence. Many industry experts believe that institutional integration is the most difficult. Although network convergence also presents technical challenges, these can be resolved by increasing network renovation efforts and investing more financial and material resources. Only institutional integration, which involves departmental interests, poses the greatest difficulty. The current separate regulatory system is not conducive to advancing Triple Play. Therefore, coordinating the functional objectives and interest demands of two different types of industries and institutions requires superb political wisdom and, more importantly, the spirit of cooperation from both sides. If radio & TV and telecommunications each stand firm on their own interests without yielding, the best development opportunities for Triple Play will surely be missed. Therefore, the Triple Play joint venture established by Wuhan Radio & TV and Telecommunications has demonstrative significance and represents an important attempt to promote cooperation between the two sides.
For Triple Play to truly break through departmental interests and achieve long-term cooperation, in the long run, over-reliance on administrative power will certainly not work. Although a converged regulatory system is indispensable in advancing Triple Play, this is key to strengthening institutional guarantees. Therefore, enacting a converged telecommunications law can be said to be the fundamental guarantee for Triple Play.
Author: Lin Lin Source: Communications Information News