Telecom Services Provider Dr. Peng To Invest 2 Billion Yuan in WiFi Business

Telecom services provider Dr. Peng (SH:600804) planned to invest 2 billion yuan ($323,84 million) in constructing millions of WiFi access points in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen by the end of 2014, according to chairman of the company Yang Xueping (report in Chinese). He added that the firm also planned to expand this service to cities countrywide.

Based on current fixed-line networks, the company aims to establish WiFi access points in public places, such as hotels, shopping centers and parking lots. Yang emphasized that the company will provide 100M free Internet services to customers.

Dr. Peng aims to establish huge user database by providing free services to customers, and then, pushing games and ads to targeted customers. The company will then share commissions with third-party partners.

The company’s revenue from Internet access business amounted to 2.30 billion yuan, accounting for 86% of the total revenue, according to the firm’s 2013 interim report.

Yang sees huge market potentials in China’s mobile Internet industry given the popularity of smart mobile devices. In 2012, the market size of mobile Internet-related industries amounted to over 900 billion yuan and the number of mobile users reached 1.2 billion, said Yang.