Why keep spending huge amounts building out telecommunications towers and infrastructure that often overlaps or duplicates what the competition is doing? Surely there are better ways to spend time and resources.
That's the conclusion China's three largest telcos finally arrived at this week when they agreed to sell their industry network assets to a new joint venture known as "China Tower Corp." in a deal worth about $36 billion.
The three government-owned telcos are China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom. The country is already the world's largest mobile market, and the deal shows the huge muscle China's central government can flex when it wants to improve efficiency of state-owned assets and infrastructure.
China Mobile’s stake in the joint venture, which was initially formed last year in preparation for the shares and cash deal, will be 38 percent, with China Unicom owning 28 percent, and China Telecom getting another 28 percent. The deal is expected to close by the end of this month.
We recently reported that China passed 250 million 4G users in July -- more than double the number of subscribers in the U.S.