About C114

C114

C114, published at c114.com.cn and in English at en.c114.com.cn, is a Shanghai-based telecommunications-industry news portal founded in 1999. Known as China Communications Net, it publishes Chinese telecom operator, equipment, 5G and information-and-communications-technology policy news and data, and it is read across China's communications industry as a specialist trade title. Where China's general news portals cover telecom as one topic among many, C114 covers nothing else — and that single-industry focus, maintained since the end of the 1990s, is what defines it.

The portal's name and longevity both date from the formative period of China's modern telecom industry. Founded in the year after the Ministry of Information Industry was created in the 1998 restructuring of the old Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, C114 has reported every generation of Chinese network building since: fixed-line expansion, 2G and 3G, the Broadband China programme, 4G, fibre to the home, 5G and now satellite internet and artificial intelligence in networks.

Identity and scope

C114 is identified in Chinese telecom-media directories as a Shanghai communications-industry portal dating from 1999. Its Chinese site carries the full weight of its reporting, and its English edition, C114 - China Communication Network, translates a selection of its coverage for international readers — one of the few Chinese telecom trade publications to maintain a standing English service. The English site's structure shows the portal's range directly: its channels include Top News, Policy, Operating, Vendor, Device, ICT, Apps, Network Convergence, Internet of Things, 4G/5G and Cloud Computing.

That channel list is a map of the industry C114 serves. "Operating" follows the carriers — China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom — whose results, tenders and subscriber figures are the industry's basic data. "Vendor" follows the equipment makers, led by Huawei and ZTE. "Policy" follows the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the regulators. Device, IoT and cloud channels follow the industry's expansion beyond connectivity itself.

What C114 publishes

The portal's daily output illustrates its brief. Its top-news coverage includes items such as China Telecom's operating revenue for the first three quarters of a year (380.1 billion yuan in its 2026 reporting, with core business revenue of 359.3 billion yuan), China Mobile's quarterly revenue, China Tower's results — 72 billion yuan of revenue with 2.184 million tower sites and 3.872 million tenants in the same reporting round — and network milestones such as the launch of successive batches of low-orbit satellite internet satellites from the Hainan commercial spaceport.

Alongside results, C114 covers procurement — for example, the suppliers shortlisted for China Telecom's outdoor optical cable tenders — and management changes at the big vendors, such as Huawei's board appointments. Its policy coverage tracks MIIT initiatives from broadband strategy to the opening of telecom services to private and foreign capital, and its archive holds the industry's running record: earlier coverage documents the Broadband China era, when fibre-to-the-home subscribers passed 120 million by early 2016 and 4G covered China's main cities and towns serving more than 500 million subscribers.

The industry it serves

China's telecommunications industry is one of the largest in the world, and it is unusually legible: three state-owned national operators, a tower company, a handful of dominant equipment vendors, and a single ministry setting policy and allocating spectrum and numbers. That structure suits a specialist portal. C114's readers — operator and vendor staff, regulators, analysts, suppliers and trade journalists — need the industry's facts quickly and completely: tender results, tariff and licensing decisions, technology standards work such as that of the China Communications Standards Association, and the quarterly numbers by which the sector measures itself.

C114's coverage of topics like optical communications shows the depth its readers expect: expert assessments from figures such as Wei Leping of the MIIT's science and technology commission on market prospects, FTTH port and user statistics, and the progress of all-optical network construction province by province. A general portal could not sustain that level of specialisation; a trade portal exists precisely to do so.

English edition and international readership

The English edition sets C114 apart from most Chinese industry media. Global vendors, analysts and journalists who follow China's telecom market — the world's largest single market for network equipment and mobile subscribers — use C114's English service as a window onto Chinese-language industry news: operator results, MIIT policy drafts open for comment, standards activity and technology trials, translated and published under the C114 name.

That outward-facing role has grown with the industry itself. As Chinese vendors such as Huawei and ZTE became global suppliers, and as topics like 5G standards, satellite internet and AI-native networks became matters of international policy debate, a Shanghai trade portal founded in 1999 found itself publishing source material for a worldwide professional audience.

Position among Chinese technology media

China's technology media divide into consumer portals, which review phones and computers for buyers; business media, which cover technology companies as companies; and industry media, which cover a sector for its own professionals. C114 belongs firmly to the third group, and within telecom it is one of the established names, listed in Chinese telecom-media directories alongside the industry's journals and association publications.

Its competitors for the communications brief are narrower still — optical-communications specialists, standards bodies' own publications, and the operators' and vendors' corporate channels. C114's distinction is breadth within the sector: policy, operators, vendors, devices and networks in one publication, in Chinese and English, on a daily cycle that follows the industry's own rhythm of results seasons, tenders and conferences.

Regulation and the policy beat

Telecom in China is a regulated industry, and C114's policy channel reflects the framework its readers work within: MIIT's licensing and spectrum decisions, the Cybersecurity Law environment in which networks operate, and industrial policy from Broadband China to the opening of value-added telecom services in free trade zones. The portal's reporting of MIIT consultations — such as the draft measures on innovating information-and-communication industry management, with their proposals on market access, fair competition and services for private capital — is the kind of primary regulatory material its professional readers rely on.

Because C114 is a news publication, it also works within China's internet news licensing system administered by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the framework governing online news information services across the country. Its standing as an established, directory-listed industry portal reflects that institutional footing.

Readers and how the site is used

C114's core readers are inside the industry: operator and China Tower staff following competitors and tenders, vendor and supplier teams tracking procurement and standards, analysts and investors following the listed carriers' numbers, and officials following policy. Its secondary readership is international — the global telecom trade that needs Chinese industry news in English.

For both audiences the site functions as a record as much as a news service. Its archive, running from the 3G era through Broadband China and 4G to 5G, satellite internet and AI in networks, documents the build-out of the largest communications market on earth as it was reported at the time, by a publication that has covered nothing else since 1999.

Why C114 matters

C114 matters because China's telecom industry needs — and has — a trade press of its own. Founded in Shanghai in 1999, at the moment the modern industry took shape, the portal has followed operators, vendors, policy and technology through every network generation since, in Chinese and in English. For the professionals who build and run China's networks, and for the worldwide audience that watches them, C114 is one of the standing sources of record.