A Study On The Competition And Regulatory Reform Of China's Telecommunication Industry

Telecommunication industry is one of the backbone industries of national economy, and plays an important role in economic and social development. The impact of telecommunication industry's development on other industry sectors and the entire national economy should never be under-recognized. Theories and practices on the government regulation toward telecommunication industry are important topics for academic, government and industry research.This dissertation applies principals of Industrial Organization Theories and Economics of Regulation to the study of China's regulatory reform of telecommunication industry. First part of this study provides a general historical review on the history of competition and regulatory reform of China's telecommunication industry, and analyzes the impact of regulation and policies toward the industry development in different phases. Second part of the study conducts an empirical analysis on China telecommunication industry' market structure and the economic effects of regulation. Analysis results show a significant upgrade of overall market structure and continuous improvement regulation performance. Over the years, the industry has transformed from a monopoly-driven to a preliminary competition-driven market. However, monopoly still rules in certain sub-sectors such as fixed lines and mobile telecommunications. The analysis of telecommunication market structure and performance concludes that China's the regulation development obviously lags behind the industry's economic development. Areas for improvement include regulations on pricing competition, local network monopoly, independence of regulatory institutions, and telecommunication legislation. Last part of the study summarizes and suggests a few areas need to be improved and optimized for future industry regulation reform.China telecommunication industry's competition and regulatory reform has achieved promising preliminary results. However, to sustain a rapid and healthy growth of China telecommunication industry, further reform are still needed to accelerate the formation and optimization of a competition-driven market structure...