Mobile networks 'at war' in Wenzhou

By Hu Yongqi (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-14 07:28

A local company under China Mobile was Sunday accused of attacking China Telecom's network in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, after four of its employees were caught calling China Telecom network with more than 200 cellphones at the same time last Monday.

Local police confirmed that over 200 China Telecom 3G mobiles had been found in the car last Monday and that the phones had been running for at least one hour on average.

Xu Weijie, director of a local office of China Telecom in the city, said he caught the China Mobile staff making the calls when looking for a parking space at Wenzhou University.

"They were deliberately interrupting our signal. This is not the only time they have sought to interfere with our signal in densely populated areas," he told China Daily Sunday.

The China Mobile firm employees claimed they were testing the capacity of the China Telecom signal tower in the area as some customers had complained it was weak.

One of the four, China Mobile employee Zhu Chuanping, was quoted by the Oriental Morning Post as saying that they bought China Telecom mobiles to examine how strong the China Telecom network was because the network's signal was unstable.

Another of the four, surnamed Dai, was quoted by People.com.cn as saying: "We didn't do anything illegal, only some testing of their network."

But experts said that such a test would usually be conducted at night with three or four phones at most. Using 200 phones at the same time would congest the network and could even paralyze it.

Zhang Bing, manager of the China Mobile office where the four employees work, refused to comment Sunday.

"This incident is only one case of vicious competition between telecom operators in China. And we hope more regulations can be drawn up to supervise the telecom industry," Xu said.

China Telecom launched a promotion plan this month to sell 3G mobiles. But recently, dozens of China Telecom customers said they could not get through to China Mobile customers.

A student who refused to be named said that there must be something wrong with the China Telecom signal tower because China Telecom mobiles could reach all numbers except China Mobile ones.