A few days ago, the news of preparing to set up the "National Tower Company" stirred up a thousand waves in the telecommunications industry. After the company is established, it will be fully responsible for the construction and maintenance of the iron tower. In the future, the three major telecom operators in China will no longer choose their own sites to build towers, but rent the company's towers.
On the surface, the Tower Company, led by SASAC and brewed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and three major operators (China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom), aims at integrating the tower resources of operators, unifying operation and management, opposing redundant construction and saving capital expenditure.
It should be admitted that the site selection of base stations is getting more and more difficult, and the construction of iron towers is also costly and laborious. To this end, some western countries have partially realized the enjoyment of base station towers. However, western tower companies must not monopolize the resources and prices of base station sites and towers, let alone deprive mobile operators of the right to choose their own sites and build towers. Because there is not one such tower company, but many. Only by relying on good service and reasonable price can they compete for mobile operators as their customers in the fierce competition.
It can be seen that the key to the establishment of China Tower Company is not whether to divest the base stations and towers of telecom operators, but whether the tower company will form a monopoly.
The monopoly of this tower will bring endless trouble.
First of all, monopolizing the Tower Company will seriously damage the development of China's telecommunications industry. As we all know, China's three major telecom operators have different 2G, 3G and 4G networks, as well as various technical standards such as GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA, TD-LTE and FDD-LTE in the future. These networks and standards not only have different technologies and frequencies, but also have obviously different business strategies for different technologies and different markets. All these make them have different requirements for the location and distribution of base stations.
If the tower company is an exclusive monopoly, it will be difficult to meet the various needs of telecom operators for base stations and towers in time. This will affect the effective play of network technology of operators and cannot meet the needs of the market and consumers in time.
Second, monopolizing the tower company will harm the interests of consumers. Since this iron tower company has mastered the administrative monopoly power of all iron tower resources, it is bound to master the pricing power of renting iron towers. Because any monopoly enterprise pursues the nature of maximizing profits, it is possible to set the highest monopoly price, and the three major operators will only passively accept it. In this way, telecom operators can only pass this cost on to consumers, resulting in an increase in telecom tariffs.
Third, the monopoly tower company will become a "super monopoly" leading the fate of telecom operators. It is precisely because operators have different requirements for base stations and towers, so the location of base stations and the priority of tower construction will have a great impact on their performance. More importantly, it will also determine the user experience of operators and even affect the life and death of operators. Therefore, this monopoly tower company will have the power to decide the operating performance and even life and death of the three operators.
Fourth, the monopoly tower company will become a monopoly "national mobile communication company". Although the business scope of Tower Company is limited to the base station site and the tower, it can also make all the computer rooms and cables of the base station in the same site on the grounds of "integrating resources and opposing repeated construction".
According to this logic, it can be further extended to all mobile communication devices in the base station. In this way, all mobile base stations will be monopolized, and the three operators will lose their wireless networks and become "virtual operator" only responsible for business sales. It can be seen that the establishment of Tower Company is only the first step for China telecom industry to return to monopoly. The achievements of China telecom industry in breaking monopoly and promoting competition in the past 20 years are likely to be destroyed.
The essence of SASAC
The establishment of the Tower Company was led by SASAC. The basic principles of economics prove that a country's productivity level determines its social welfare. Under the condition of a certain level of productivity (that is, a certain social welfare), corporate profits and consumer interests (that is, "consumer surplus") are directly contradictory. Therefore, in the national economic life, the government must fully protect the interests of consumers. Only in this way can enterprises be forced to strive to improve the productivity level for survival and profit, thus enhancing the social welfare of the whole society. At the same time, countless facts have proved that the best way to protect consumers' interests and force enterprises to improve productivity is to break monopoly and promote competition.
Before the State Council established the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) as an "ad hoc" institution in 2003, many people thought that its purpose was to prevent the loss of state-owned assets, and its function was naturally to audit assets. However, as a ministerial-level government agency, SASAC has mastered the power of human, financial and hundreds of super-large state-owned enterprises in the national economy since its establishment, "managing people, affairs and assets", and set the goal of supervising and managing state-owned enterprises as "maintaining and increasing value, becoming bigger and stronger".
In the macro economy, the government's control goal is to improve social welfare and productivity, while in the micro economy, the management goal of enterprises is to maximize profits, which is fundamentally different. Therefore, the essence of "maintaining value and increasing value, becoming bigger and stronger" is to confuse the difference between government macro-control and enterprise micro-management, and treat every industry in China as an enterprise. Obviously, this goal of SASAC runs counter to the goal of the government's macro-control.
In order to achieve this goal, SASAC has further developed "key performance indicators" (KPI) that go deep into all details of enterprise management for strict assessment. Therefore, the state-owned enterprises under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) are merciless only if they compete with the people for profits. At the same time, hundreds of super-large state-owned enterprises in China have lost their independent position and operational autonomy in the market and become branches, subsidiaries or "workshops" under the parent company SASAC. This is contrary to the basic principles of breaking the planned economy and separating government from enterprise in China's economic system reform for decades.
More seriously, because monopoly is the most effective means to ensure the profits of enterprises, and competition will inevitably damage the economic interests of monopoly enterprises, the goal of "maintaining and increasing value, becoming bigger and stronger" is itself anti-competitive. At the same time, because these super-large state-owned enterprises with administrative monopoly have various privileges, it is often difficult for government regulators to effectively supervise their anti-competitive monopoly behavior.
For more than a decade, the telecommunications industry has been one of the most prominent industries in which state-owned capital and the private sector compete for profits. For example, the after-tax net profit of China Mobile, a leading company, has remained above 20% for many years. There has even been such a thing: an executive of an operator once asked the author how to "increase costs and reduce profits" because its profits have reached the point of "undisclosed". Even so, the newly established State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) described the "price war" in telecom competition as "the loss of state-owned assets" ten years ago, which was strictly prohibited. After the ban was invalid, in June 2004, 165438+ 10 led the senior management exchanges of China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom. This obvious violation of the minimum rules of market competition not only caused an uproar in world public opinion, but also made China's "market economy status" become a global laughing stock for a while.
In the telecom reorganization led by SASAC in 2008, six operators including Netcom, Tietong and Weitong merged into three. Compared with the competition of more than six telecom operators in Hong Kong, this reorganization obviously weakened the competition to some extent. This time, the "National Tower Company" led by SASAC may become the first step to restore the monopoly of China telecom industry.
Today, a large number of facts in China's telecom industry and other industries can prove that the establishment of SASAC in 2003 was a turning point in China's economic system reform, and it has become the largest monopoly capital consortium in the world in any sense, which runs counter to the basic concept of market economy and the goal of further deepening China's system reform.
It is urgent to deepen the system reform.
The decision of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee clearly pointed out that the socialist market economy must follow the law that the market plays a decisive role and focus on solving the problems of excessive government intervention and insufficient supervision. The responsibilities and functions of the government are mainly to ensure fair competition and strengthen market supervision.
Compared with this principle, as an ad hoc organization directly under the State Council, should the orientation, authority and tasks of SASAC, especially the goal of "maintaining and increasing value, becoming bigger and stronger", be adjusted to "preventing the loss of state-owned assets"? Can we even transfer this task to the National Audit Office and other government departments and fundamentally abolish SASAC? These problems are unavoidable.
With regard to the base station sites and transmission towers of mobile communication, it is gratifying to see that China Telecom and China Unicom have started to enjoy the base station transmission towers in some areas where there is a shortage of sites on the basis of voluntariness and mutual benefit. Companies serving the mobile communication industry, such as China Communications Service Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhongtong Service"), have also undertaken a lot of tower construction and maintenance work.
As for the professional tower company, since western countries can do it, China can certainly do it, but the key lies in how to prevent its monopoly.
First of all, if the base stations and towers of telecom operators are to be stripped off, it is conceivable that if they become three, completely independent of the original operators, will they compete with each other according to market rules? If so, why must it be merged into one monopoly company instead of three?
Second, considering that the three telecom operators are all listed companies, in the current equity scheme disclosed by the media, their shares in the Tower Company are basically the result of a game of interests, so it is hard to say that they have not violated the rights and interests of * *. If three tower companies are established, each share of the original telecom operator can be directly exchanged for 1 share of the new telecom operator and 1 share of the corresponding tower company. Is this more logical and easier to operate in the capital market?
Third, since the Tower Company will introduce private capital, will it be a "window dressing" as a minority shareholder or an "activation mechanism" as a major shareholder to gain control?
Fourthly, Stie Glisse once said when describing the situation after the disintegration of the former Soviet Union: "State monopoly is lazy and private monopoly is evil." This is because private monopoly is more insatiable than state monopoly, and it is bound to intensify the search for people's fat and paste. In this case, if private capital once has the control right of monopoly tower company, is it possible to bring greater disaster?
There are still many such problems. To sum up, it is one: how to prevent monopoly and promote competition in the process of the establishment of Tower Company. According to the decision of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, that is, how to "maximize benefits and optimize efficiency according to market rules, market prices and market competition". Rather than how to coordinate the establishment of a "national tower company" with administrative monopoly.
The writer is a professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.