Fiber Optic Industry “Bad Victory and Disintegration” Telecom Monopoly Needs to be Broken

In the past two years, due to the demanding construction of 3G transmission networks, the domestic optical communications market has created an upsurge, and by 2011, the good news for the optical communications market has spread again and again, and the optical fiber market seems to be again Usher in a new round of prosperity.

It is understood that major operators have reported spreading the bandwidth to expand the business. Radio and television operators stated that the bandwidth will reach 100M when large-scale NGB construction is to be promoted across the country. China Telecom stated that it will achieve full coverage of southern urban optical networks within three to five years, with more than 100 million 100M broadband subscribers and China Unicom at the same time. (600050, shares it) will also be the first to start fiber-to-the-home plans in major cities across the country to upgrade broadband speeds.

Such a large-scale project is undoubtedly a good opportunity for the fiber-optic equipment manufacturers to “save a sum”. However, according to industry sources, the current competition among fiber-equipment manufacturers is fierce and the profits they can obtain are very low. Poor.

According to statistics, in 2000, the price of a fiber-optic-kilometer fiber was 1800 yuan. Since 2002, the price of fiber-optic cable has dropped and dropped. By 2009, this price has fallen by 85 yuan. The average price in 2010 is 75. Yuan, the lowest price is only 55 yuan. At present, due to the impact of the earthquake in Japan, the shortage of fiber optics makes the average price of the fiber around 71 yuan.

“The optical fiber market is in a state of oversupply for a long time. The rapid growth of production capacity has caused the market to become saturated. Frequent price wars are one of the reasons for the declining prices of optical fibers.” Wang Ningyuan, a research fellow of China Investment Advisor IT industry accepted the “China Sankei Shimbun” The reporter said in an interview that the other major reason is that the optical fiber market belongs to the buyer's market. The main demand is single, mainly for telecom operators and developers, while the buyer's market has many enterprises and fierce competition. The unbalanced market position of buyers and sellers makes the optical fiber equipment Manufacturers are in a weak position, and developers are trying to reduce costs when they buy products, paying too much attention to prices, and ignoring quality factors, leading fiber manufacturers to lower prices.

As Wang Ningyuan said, too low prices make producers ignore the issue of product quality in order to obtain a better price advantage. It is understood that the average life cycle of fiber optic equipment made of qualified materials is 25 to 30 years, while the average life cycle of equipment currently in operation in communications networks is only 10 years, and some are less than 3 years. The quality of fiber optic equipment has seriously affected the transmission of the network and communication failures are not uncommon.

Wang Ningyuan believes that such a situation will distort the price positioning of fiber-optic equipment manufacturers, causing manufacturers to blindly pursue low-cost, and will not hesitate to shoddy and tamper with them to reduce prices, and product quality cannot be guaranteed.

Obviously, developers pay too much attention to prices, and fiber-equipment vendors are overly pressured to lower costs, making equipment manufacturers focus on the low-end fiber market and ignoring the research and development and production of high-end products. In the long run, it will inevitably affect the healthy development of the domestic fiber market.

If the unfavorable situation in the optical fiber market continues, the price war will evolve into a vicious competition. Not only will the profits of enterprises decline sharply, but they will also disrupt the normal market order. Therefore, they should be dealt with and improved as soon as possible.

In this regard, Wang Ningyuan suggested that the communication and exchange between manufacturers, operators, and developers should be strengthened to change and optimize the bidding model for low price-oriented products by operators and developers, and to establish reasonable and scientific tendering standards. In addition, quality standards for tendered products should also be established. Fiber optic equipment manufacturers' products must meet relevant technical requirements and quality requirements before they are likely to win the bid.

In fact, the current situation in the optical fiber market has also exposed problems at the policy level. Wang Ningyuan believes that the reform of the telecommunications industry should be accelerated, the monopoly system of state-owned enterprises should be changed, and private capital should be introduced to compete. In addition, it is necessary to establish a third-party testing agency that is independent of the telecommunications system, and to establish a comprehensive market-based inspection mechanism to evaluate the quality of the current network construction and the existing problems.