China's Cable TV Architecture Has Huge Broadband Potential

Communications Today, Nov 2, 2001

As China prepares to join the World Trade Organization and bring its 1.3 billion people into the New Economy, companies are eyeing its fast growing telecommunications and cable television market as a way to bring the Internet to the world's most populous nation.

Currently, there are about 25 million Internet subscribers in China, but only about 100,000 of them get cable broadband, according to the Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald. In total, about 90 million homes in China get cable television, setting the stage for a huge broadband revolution aided by an extensive fiber-optic coaxial cable television architecture built in recent years by the Chinese government.

One company that hopes to lead the way to opening up the broadband market in China is the aptly named China Broadband, which recently signed an agreement to provide cable broadband services in Hunan province. China Broadband has also entered into another agreement to provide high-speed Internet service to Chengdu, a city of over 10 million people with a cable TV subscriber market of more than 1.5 million.

For more information on China Broadband, plus excerpts from an exclusive interview with its chief executive officer, Matthew Heysel, see the Nov. 6 issue of PBI Media's Broadband Networking News. >TK Williams Communications Group [WCG]: The Boeing Company [BA]: