China’s NGB to Support 200 Million Subscribers by 2020
The cable operator may become the fourth telecom vendor in the country.
China’s Next Generation Broadcasting (NGB) initiative, a broadcasting network based on digital cable TV and mobile broadcasting technology, stands to significantly shake up the status quo in the country’s communications industry, potentially emerging as the nation’s fourth major telecom player and largest broadband supplier. However, NGB’s lofty promise may be too good to be true, iSuppli Corp. believes.
If the NGB is established as planned, the cable operator will become the fourth telecom vendor in China, joining China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom. The NGB also is targeted to become the No.-1 broadband access network in China in terms of subscribers.
China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) established a model network for NGB in July.
A model network consisting of 500,000 subscribers is expected to be available by the end of 2010 in Shanghai. The NGB will be expanded to other cities in China in the future. NGB aims to have 30Mbit/Sec. bandwidth access for each subscriber and is based on next-generation interactive High Definition (HD) technology for television broadcast. It also will support value-added information services.
SARFT plans to build a model NGB network with coverage in all major cities in China in approximately three years. It also will complete a full NGB network in approximately 10 years that achieves convergence of telecom, Internet, and broadcast networks, to serve as China’s next generation of national information infrastructure.
The introduction of NGB falls under the category of triple-play integration in China. According to SARFT and MOST, NGB is a broadcasting network based on the digital cable television and Chinese Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting (CMMB), with a high-performance broadband information network core technology as the support, built for the next generation of radio and television networks.
A Fourth Telecom Operator?
NGB is not a purely technical system, but rather related to the network integration, business co-operation model of innovation as well as a systematic project.
However, the NGB plan seems too good to be true. The NGB has no clear profitable business model yet. In the Shanghai NGB Model, the initial investment is financed by MOST. But in the future, when NGB steps into commercial deployment without government financing, the question arises of where cable operators can find money.
As part of the development plan set up by SARFT, NGB is targeted to reach 200 million homes by the end of 2020. iSuppli estimates a total investment at least $29.3 billion to cover the planned 200 million subscribers, including router, switching and broadband access equipment.
China has a fragmented cable market with more than 100 operators, none of which has more than 10 million subscribers. Given this, it seems like an impossible mission to build an integrated network with so many local cable operators. So far, the 10-year plan for NGB development seems too far away from now. Considering there is not a state standard or specification to define NGB, it is too early to make any estimation and forecast on the NGB market. Consolidating the small municipal cable operators into one or a few integrated bodies is the key goal for SARFT in the short term.
China’s Next Generation Broadcasting (NGB) initiative, a broadcasting network based on digital cable TV and mobile broadcasting technology, stands to significantly shake up the status quo in the country’s communications industry, potentially emerging as the nation’s fourth major telecom player and largest broadband supplier. However, NGB’s lofty promise may be too good to be true, iSuppli Corp. believes.
If the NGB is established as planned, the cable operator will become the fourth telecom vendor in China, joining China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom. The NGB also is targeted to become the No.-1 broadband access network in China in terms of subscribers.
China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) established a model network for NGB in July.
A model network consisting of 500,000 subscribers is expected to be available by the end of 2010 in Shanghai. The NGB will be expanded to other cities in China in the future. NGB aims to have 30Mbit/Sec. bandwidth access for each subscriber and is based on next-generation interactive High Definition (HD) technology for television broadcast. It also will support value-added information services.
SARFT plans to build a model NGB network with coverage in all major cities in China in approximately three years. It also will complete a full NGB network in approximately 10 years that achieves convergence of telecom, Internet, and broadcast networks, to serve as China’s next generation of national information infrastructure.
The introduction of NGB falls under the category of triple-play integration in China. According to SARFT and MOST, NGB is a broadcasting network based on the digital cable television and Chinese Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting (CMMB), with a high-performance broadband information network core technology as the support, built for the next generation of radio and television networks.
A Fourth Telecom Operator?
NGB is not a purely technical system, but rather related to the network integration, business co-operation model of innovation as well as a systematic project.
However, the NGB plan seems too good to be true. The NGB has no clear profitable business model yet. In the Shanghai NGB Model, the initial investment is financed by MOST. But in the future, when NGB steps into commercial deployment without government financing, the question arises of where cable operators can find money.
As part of the development plan set up by SARFT, NGB is targeted to reach 200 million homes by the end of 2020. iSuppli estimates a total investment at least $29.3 billion to cover the planned 200 million subscribers, including router, switching and broadband access equipment.
China has a fragmented cable market with more than 100 operators, none of which has more than 10 million subscribers. Given this, it seems like an impossible mission to build an integrated network with so many local cable operators. So far, the 10-year plan for NGB development seems too far away from now. Considering there is not a state standard or specification to define NGB, it is too early to make any estimation and forecast on the NGB market. Consolidating the small municipal cable operators into one or a few integrated bodies is the key goal for SARFT in the short term.
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