"The Regulations were voted through!"
Jia Jia rushed back to the company and reported the good news to the leadership of the company who was meeting the party committee as soon as possible. The words did not fall, and the venue was boiling.
This is an exciting scene that happened on September 25, 2015.
On this day, the Regulations on the Construction and Protection of Telecommunications Facilities in Hebei Province (hereinafter referred to as the Regulations) were voted and passed by the Standing Committee of the Hebei Provincial People's Congress and are scheduled to come into force on December 1, 2015.
The voting scene of the Regulations
This Regulation is of great significance. This is the first local legal provision in mainland China to clarify the content of telecommunications facilities and list "communication tower" as one of them, and it is also the first local legal provision to participate in the whole process of drafting and legislative research after the establishment of China Tower.
The promulgation of the Regulations has since filled the gap in telecommunications legislation in Hebei Province, opened a new chapter in the development of the information and communication industry in Hebei Province, and also opened a new journey for the development of China Tower Hebei Branch (hereinafter referred to as "Hebei Tower").
Give order to the industry
"Draft a legal text on telecommunications protection, as soon as possible!" In August 2014, Fan Fuzhou, then general manager of Hebei Tower, issued this "hard task".
At that time, Hebei Tower was in its infancy.
"If such a legal provision led by the tower company is introduced at the initial stage of the company, it will not only help to establish the company's industry status in the future, but also bring good market order to the industry," Fan Fuzhou has such a long-term plan.
However, filling the gaps is not easy. At that time, the mainland had not yet clarified the relevant laws and regulations of telecommunications facilities, especially communication towers, and chaos in the industry was frequent.
Jia Jia and Wang Jingdong of the Policy and Regulation Department of the Hebei Provincial Traffic Management Bureau spent more than 20 days sleeping, reviewing all available literature and communicating with relevant legal experts many times, and finally drafted an 80-article telecommunications specification and protection document, which was included in the legislative plan of Hebei Province that year.
During the legislative research, the current situation of the grassroots industry once shocked Jia Jia and the research team.
In a village in Baoding City, there is a base station with an annual electricity bill of tens of thousands of yuan, several times higher than the normal electricity consumption.
When a village in Shijiazhuang suddenly had a power outage, the villagers "gave the green light" to the power maintenance personnel to enter the village for maintenance, but obstructed the communication base station maintenance personnel in every possible way, and required "tolls" to pass;
In a certain place in Cangzhou, field base station equipment was stolen and destroyed, but there was no legal protection;
According to incomplete statistics from Hebei Province, the direct economic losses caused by theft and destruction, brutal construction, vehicle collisions or random demolition of telecommunications facilities exceeded 10 million yuan...
Grassroots governments also know little about the protection of telecommunications facilities.
Taking a township government in Cangzhou City as an example, in the face of a research group that came to understand the situation, the staff hastily took the matter on the grounds that "this matter is not under our control" and "did not receive a reception task".
Legislative research site
The more brutal the status quo, the more necessary and urgent the legislation.
On September 25, 2015, the Regulations on the Construction and Protection of Telecommunications Facilities in Hebei Province were unanimously passed at the second round of voting meeting of the Standing Committee of the Hebei Provincial People's Congress, and more than 20 editions were revised from drafting the provisions to the voting passing, which lasted one year.
The Regulations make it clear that telecommunications facilities refer to communication equipment, communication lines and supporting facilities that provide telecommunications services to the society and realize telecommunications functions, of which communication equipment refers to communication towers, base stations, etc. This is the first time that a communication tower has been explicitly classified as a telecommunications facility and placed first.
The Regulations regulate the construction and protection of information and communication facilities in terms of planning and construction, safety protection, supervision and inspection, and legal liability, such as commercial buildings and urban residential quarters, etc., which are not allowed to collect entrance fees and other related fees; Public institutions, etc. provide free venues for the construction of telecommunications facilities; No unit or individual may prevent emergency communication support or emergency repair personnel of telecommunications facilities from entering, and shall not collect fees...
Telecommunications construction and protection plans were included in the Regulations one by one, legal responsibilities were further clarified, and industry order began to be rebuilt.
"unimaginable change"
Jia Jia still remembers the apprehension before the "Regulations" were voted on.
"The discussion was very intense during the voting process, and we argued for some of the provisions. It was not passed in the first round of voting, and it was not until the second round of voting was unanimously passed that our hanging hearts landed."
It turns out how intense the discussion was at the time, and how significant the changes brought about by the Regulations were.
Wang Baoping, editor-in-chief of the News and Publicity Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (People's Posts and Telecommunications), commented that since the establishment of China Tower, the joint construction and sharing has achieved remarkable results. By promoting the "entry into the law" and "regulations" of communication facilities, the opening of public resources has been promoted, the problem of the right of way of communication facilities has been effectively solved, and the "last mile" of network construction has been opened.
As early as before the establishment of the tower company, "difficult to enter and expensive to enter" has always been a stubborn problem in communication construction. However, the competition between the three operators is fierce, and the site selection process is highly exclusive, and the price is raised by each other, resulting in difficult site selection or duplicate construction, which seriously affects the resource efficiency of the industry.
The establishment of China Tower is to separate the ownership and use rights of communication towers, and change multiple independent construction into overall planning, joint construction and sharing.
The "inclusion of communication construction into urban and rural construction planning" in the "Regulations", and the subsequent entry of the tower company into the administrative examination and approval hall, fundamentally solved the problem of "difficult entry" in communication construction, and formed a "government-led, tower-coordinated" communication construction pattern.
Up to now, 414 prefecture-level and city-level tower companies have led the industry to enter the local administrative service hall to carry out the approval of communication construction of engineering projects.
Take Xiong'an New Area of Hebei Province as a typical representative. In 2018, Hebei Iron Tower actively participated in the formulation of the "Hebei Xiong'an New Area Planning Outline" led by the Hebei Provincial Party Committee and the provincial government.
"The outline is equivalent to a map of the construction of Xiong'an New Area, after the construction of communication facilities is included in the urban planning, all 5G construction pilots, such as the construction of the civic center and the construction of the computer room, are planned in advance as infrastructure facilities, which is very convenient for the later construction," Jia Jia said.
"Such a change would have been unimaginable before."
According to statistics, after 2021, Hebei Tower will undertake a total of 336 5G new macro station projects in Xiong'an New Area, with room construction reaching 80 million square meters. Under the "government-led and tower coordinated" mode, the three operators have synchronized access, joint construction and sharing, and greatly improved the efficiency of network construction.
Power 5G, share the tower
It is worth mentioning that in response to the specific problems encountered in the implementation, Hebei Tower has promoted the local government to successively issue 26 supporting local regulations to "escort" the entry of communications.
For example, for the construction of communication in scenic spots, Baoding Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism issued the "Implementation Plan for Further Standardizing the Construction of Communication Network Infrastructure in Tourist Attractions in our City", which clearly pointed out that each scenic spot should provide basic network construction for free, optimize the maintenance in the later stage of supplementary point and other communication required for the location of the site computer room; Provide electricity for communication equipment free of charge or in the form of direct power supply, etc.
The regulation has benefited 12 districts and counties, 30 scenic spots, and 108 base stations, saving more than 500,000 yuan in annual rent, saving nearly 80% of electricity costs compared with before, and significantly reducing industry costs.
Nowadays, under the demonstration effect of Hebei Tower, other provincial and municipal branches of China Tower have also actively promoted local governments to "enter the law" and "regulations" the construction of communication facilities, the protection policies are more clear and detailed, and the overall communication environment presents a good trend of openness and order, laying a solid foundation for building a network power and digital China.
Author: Di Yating
Preliminary review: Sun Si
Reviewer: Liu Jinliang
Final judge: Jiang Shuilin
Further reading
Wang Chunhui: China Tower firmly fulfills the mission of joint construction and sharing, effectively enhances the strategic position of information and communication infrastructure, and Wang Aihua, deputy chief engineer of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology: "The tower model" jointly builds and shares to help the high-quality development of the communications industry
Xin Pengjun, editor-in-chief of the Communications Industry News: Deepen the new stage of joint construction and sharing
Liu Qicheng, editor-in-chief of Communication World All Media: The demonstration effect of the "tower model" should be amplified
Jointly build and share to consolidate the foundation of a network power Zeng Jianqiu: Digital technology empowers the co-construction and sharing of information infrastructure
Comment on the tower model, talk about the development of the industry, and talk about the power of the tower behind the 5G new infrastructure | China Tower has achieved results in promoting the "entry into the law" and "regulation" of communication infrastructure
CAICT and China Tower Release Research Report on Joint Construction and Shared Development of Communication Infrastructure (2022)