Introduction: In the first quarter of 2019, the speed-up and cost-cutting work of China's broadband network has come to an end, and China's fixed broadband and mobile broadband rates have been doubly enhanced. The substantial, phased results reflect both the importance and implementation of the government, operators and other speed reduction work, but also that China's network construction is continuing to develop to a higher level, or will bring benefits to the fiber optic cable industry.

The speed and fee reduction is not only one of the key policies implemented by the Party Central Committee, the State Council and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, but also the general demand of the people for quality high-speed network. Especially with the development of a large number of emerging leading industrial applications such as the Internet of Things, ultra-high-definition video, big data, cloud computing, industrial Internet, 5G network, the original broadband network is under pressure to continuously expand and upgrade and transform in front of new scenarios and applications. During the 2019 National Conference, Premier Li Keqiang clearly pointed out that in 2019, we should continue to promote network speed and cost reduction. That is, to carry out urban demonstration of gigabit broadband to the home, renovate and upgrade distance education and telemedicine networks; promote the expansion and upgrade of mobile network base stations, so that users can actually feel the network speed faster and more stable; reduce the average broadband tariff for small and medium-sized enterprises by another 15% in 2019, and reduce the average mobile network traffic tariff by more than 20%. It can be said that both national policies and new scenarios and applications have injected a strong driving force for speed and fee reduction.

Recently, the Broadband Development Alliance released the "China Broadband Rate Status Report" for the first quarter of 2019. Reviewing the first quarter of 2019, the following are the main points to see in China's network speed increase:

1, fixed broadband and mobile broadband rate double increase

The average download rate of China's fixed broadband network reached 1.34Mbit/s in the first quarter of 2019, an 11.7% increase from the previous quarter and an 11.19Mbit/s increase from the same period last year, with an annual increase of 55.5%;

The average download rate of China's mobile broadband users accessing the Internet using 4G networks reached 23.01Mbit/s, a year-on-year increase of 20.4%.

Comparing several landmark time nodes of network speed improvement, China's fixed broadband download rate exceeded 10 Mbit/s for the first time since the second quarter of 2016, to more than 20 Mbit/s in the first quarter of 2018, which took nearly two years; and in the first quarter of 2019, it has exceeded 30 Mbit/s, raising 10 Mbit/s in just one year, which shows that the pace of China's network speed is accelerating.

2, the eastern provinces continue to lead the central and western catch-up force is sufficient

In terms of fixed broadband download rate, Shanghai, Beijing and Jiangsu ranked the top three in the country, followed by Tianjin and Zhejiang. Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Wuhan ranked in the top five in the national ranking of major cities;

In terms of 4G network download rates, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu and Liaoning ranked among the top five provincial administrative regions in the country in terms of 4G network user download rates.

From the above chart, the regions with higher download rates of fixed broadband are still concentrated in the eastern provinces. The central and western regions are relatively lagging behind. However, with the previous notice issued by the two ministries on the organization and implementation of the 2019 new generation of information infrastructure construction project, the 13th Five-Year Plan, the Network Poverty Alleviation Action Plan and many other national policies to promote the implementation of the central and western regions, including small and medium-sized cities, the basic network will be further improved, rural and remote areas Network coverage level and network speed will be further improved.

3. Each of the three telecom operators has its own strengths

Among the basic telecommunication companies, China Telecom's average available download rate of fixed broadband is the highest at 31.57Mbit/s, followed by China Mobile and China Unicom.

In terms of mobile broadband rate download, China Unicom's 4G network users have the highest download rate.

It is true that in terms of 4G user scale, China Mobile's 4G users are more than the total number of China Telecom and China Unicom. The operational data of the three operators show that in March, China Mobile's 4G subscribers reached 723.319 million, while China Unicom's 4G users were 230 million and China Telecom's 4G users were 256 million.

In terms of the size of wired broadband users, China Telecom totaled 148 million, and China Unicom totaled 82.392 million. China Mobile's total number of wired broadband customers reached 167.03 million, still ahead of China Telecom and China Unicom.

It is worth noting that compared to the fourth quarter of 2018, China Unicom's 4G network download rate has risen from 23.57Mbit/s to 24.56Mbit/s and continues to hold the number one position among the three operators.

In addition, regarding the reduction of fees, the Development and Reform Commission in April in conjunction with relevant departments, focusing on energy, logistics, telecommunications and other key areas, research and propose key measures to reduce enterprise-related fees in 2019, is expected to reduce the annual burden of enterprises and the public more than 270 billion yuan. The three major operators are required to continue to do a good job in raising speed and lowering fees, and to ensure that they will complete the annual concession of 180 billion yuan to consumers.

From the above, in the first quarter of 2019, China has delivered a beautiful report card in terms of network speed up. In the next step, with the combined efforts of the government, operators and other units, the speed-up and tariff reduction work will make continuous progress.

Broadband network speed optimization and upgrade can not be separated from the support of fiber optic cable to the basic network. For China's fiber optic cable industry, speed and fee reduction at this stage to achieve substantial results, not only shows that China's network construction is continuing to high speed rate, high quality, on the other hand, to stimulate the growth of fiber optic cable business vitality, promote the realization of the old and new dynamic energy conversion, and access to high-quality development is beneficial, while may benefit the future development of China's fiber optic cable market.