CHINA TELECOM AND its bankers can heave a sigh of relief after its scaled-down offer managed to get away yesterday, saving bonuses, reputations and possibly the country's privatisation-driven industrial restructuring programme.
Its eventual success was no thanks to the botched attempt to raise interconnection fees for IDD calls - seen by many as a last-ditch effort to bolster the issue - which provoked outcry in Hong Kong.
Judging by the clarity with which the issue was handled, China Telecom and its regulator, the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), must use a string and two tin cans to communicate. The two have been passing the buck for the past week and it is still unclear who ordered it.
It started out as a company initiative. China Telecom chairman Zhou Deqiang, said last week: 'Actually we think the current interconnection charge is a bit too low and we have actually filed a proposal with the MII to raise the interconnection charge.'
As the controversy ballooned, the MII was flooded with calls from the media and said it would make an announcement 'as soon as possible'.
The head of the MII's information office told the South China Morning Post on Saturday he was awaiting the instruction to issue an announcement, but nothing appeared.