Examining revisions to Catalogue of Telecom Services by Category

The Catalogue of Telecommunication Services by Category is a piece of legislation that complements the Telecommunication Regulations and exists separately in the form of an appendix. Since its issuance and implementation as an appendix to the Telecommunication Regulations in September 2000, the first edition of the catalogue was subsequently revised in 2001, and again in 2003 by the former Ministry of Information Industry. In December 2015, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) revised the catalogue for the third time, the most substantive of all the revisions.

Twelve years elapsed between the previous and the most current revision, a period that witnessed earth-shaking change in China’s telecoms industry, with a continuous stream of internet and mobile internet platforms appearing. However, the relationship between the various innovative services and the catalogue and Telecommunication Regulations has always been a mess. From the revised content it can be seen that the MIIT has greatly expanded the scope of administration of the catalogue, with some formerly grey areas brought under its oversight.

Q: Now that the catalogue has greatly expanded the scope of “information services”, will the internet content provider (ICP) permit formally stride off the historical stage?

A: In the 2003 edition of the catalogue, “information services” were divided based on the basic communication networks by way of which the information was transmitted, i.e. into “fixed network, mobile network and internet”. The permits corresponding to each were entitled fixed network permits, service provider (SP) permits and ICP permits. Given that the threshold for obtaining an ICP permit is so low, it became the telecom service operating permit most applied for. In comparison, almost no one operates the voice telephone services to which fixed network permits correspond, and although the situation of the short message services to which SP permits correspond is somewhat better, operators have also experienced a decline.