Why is it sometimes difficult to switch broadband providers in certain residential areas?

Residents looking to install broadband from a specific provider may encounter hurdles such as "unclear resources," "inaccessible sites," or "complex installation processes." Operators seeking access to these sites must engage in repeated coordination with property management, residents, and existing infrastructure. Issues like tangled cables, unclear labeling, and disorganized fiber connections are common in equipment rooms, weak current wells, and wiring areas.

These seemingly minor issues collectively highlight a long-overlooked challenge: How should the 'last mile' of communication networks, which directly connects to end-users, be effectively managed?

For years, the telecommunications industry has primarily focused on base stations, fiber-optic cables, pipelines, poles, gigabit optical networks, and 5G coverage when discussing infrastructure. Internal building communication support facilities, being dispersed and embedded within property spaces, are often seen as a 'terminal issue.' However, gigabit optical networks, 5G indoor distribution systems, enterprise dedicated lines, IoT, and digital city applications must ultimately penetrate buildings, campuses, and households.

When responsibilities are unclear, maintenance is neglected, and resources are disorganized, the repercussions extend beyond a single installation or repair. They affect user choice, operator service efficiency, shared infrastructure order, and the long-term operational quality of urban digital infrastructure.

More critically, in residential communities and similar settings, building communication support facilities typically belong to public infrastructure and are not owned by operators. While operators share these facilities, they may lack property rights or on-site management authority. Property management and residents possess these public resources but may lack the expertise for maintenance. This often leads to conflicts where facilities are used without any systematic long-term management.

In recent years, Shenzhen's collaborative governance and maintenance practices for shared building communication support infrastructure have drawn industry attention. After being recognized as a model case by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the 'Shenzhen Model for Collaborative Governance and Maintenance of Shared Building Communication Support Infrastructure Networks' offers a blueprint for addressing 'last mile' governance challenges.

The 'Shenzhen Model' does not involve rebuilding communication facilities from scratch. Instead, it establishes a long-term collaborative governance and maintenance mechanism based on existing shared infrastructure used by multiple operators. This is achieved through independent accountability, unified standards, platform traceability, and closed-loop assessments.

It resolves past issues in residential communities, buildings, and campuses, such as difficult site access coordination, unclear resources, inadequate maintenance, undefined responsibilities, and limited user choices. This enables operators to access and use public infrastructure equitably and standardly, allows regulators to oversee processes and trace responsibilities, and ultimately ensures users receive stable, fair, and high-quality communication services.

Why is this area prone to being 'neglected'?

Building communication support facilities are at the crossroads of multiple stakeholders: they connect to public communication networks but are situated within closed spaces like residential communities, buildings, and campuses. They serve end-users but involve complex relationships among operators, construction units, property management, residents, and maintenance units.

When multiple stakeholders are involved, responsibilities tend to become blurred. After construction and handover, questions arise about who is responsible for long-term maintenance, who coordinates site access, who manages issues like crossed lines, resource occupation, and equipment room management, and how responsibilities are clarified after a fault occurs.

In many existing buildings, these issues have long relied on offline communication, manual experience, and ad-hoc coordination. It is not uncommon for developers, property management, or intermediaries to control on-site resources. When installation barriers, user complaints, fault repairs, or site access disputes arise, problems tend to surface collectively.

Users experience 'difficult broadband installation, challenging fault repairs, and restricted choices'; operators face 'difficult site access, coordination challenges, maintenance difficulties, and undefined responsibilities'; regulators observe a mix of user complaints, network security issues, resource waste, and fair access concerns. This is not merely a technical issue but a problem of multi-stakeholder collaboration and long-term accountability.

Collaborative Governance and Shared Infrastructure: Entering a New Phase

The concept of collaborative construction and sharing of telecommunications infrastructure is not new. Over the past decade, the industry has gained extensive experience in areas like towers, pole routes, pipelines, base stations, and indoor distribution systems. However, within buildings, communication support facilities like fiber-to-the-home are often constructed by developers and shared by operators. The past focus was on 'whether they were built and usable'; now, the focus must shift to 'how they are managed and maintained after construction.'

If only construction issues are addressed without subsequent maintenance and closed-loop responsibility, old problems will resurface repeatedly. Shenzhen does not focus on one-time construction but incorporates shared building communication support infrastructure into long-term governance, forming a systematic approach around accountability, platforms, standards, maintenance, traceability, and closed loops.

If traditional communication support construction resembles 'project delivery,' collaborative governance and maintenance resemble 'long-term operation.' The next phase of collaborative construction and sharing is not just about avoiding redundant facilities but also about managing existing ones effectively.

What the Shenzhen Model Brings: An Accountability Mechanism

When discussing Shenzhen's practices, the focus often falls on 'whether independent accountable enterprises are involved.' However, stopping at this level may underestimate its true value.

The core of Shenzhen's practice is not simply introducing external entities but establishing an independent, professional, and traceable accountability mechanism under conditions where property rights, usage rights, and maintenance responsibilities are relatively separated. It answers four key questions: Who is responsible? According to what standards? How is the process recorded? How are results evaluated?

First, responsibilities are clearly defined. Without clear boundaries, a state of 'everyone is involved, but no one is ultimately responsible' emerges. The value of the accountability mechanism lies in making maintenance, management, coordination, and rectification processes standardized, checkable, and flow-based.

Second, processes are platform-based. A unified platform handles declaration, review, maintenance, rectification, acceptance, traceability, and other steps, enabling offline work to be traceable. For regulators, this means visibility and traceability; for operators, it means fewer disputes and redundancies; for users, it ultimately points to more stable and fair communication services.

Third, on-site management is standardized, and maintenance becomes a continuous mechanism. With multiple operators, building types, and devices coexisting long-term, chaos can arise in equipment rooms, lines, labels, fiber connections, construction, and acceptance without unified norms. The collaborative maintenance mechanism ensures maintenance no longer relies on ad-hoc coordination.

It is emphasized that the independent accountability mechanism respects operators' network resource ownership and operational boundaries. Accountable enterprises serve operators, are evaluated by operators and industry regulators, and primarily support public facility maintenance coordination, process traceability, standard enforcement, and closed-loop responsibility.

In other words, the value of independent accountable enterprises lies in ensuring equitable access, standard usage, and efficient service for all operators through unified rules, standards, and a supervisory mechanism.

Why Operators Need to Re-evaluate

For any new mechanism to be implemented, operator attitudes are crucial. Operators' cautious evaluations are normal and necessary: Will costs increase? Will it affect the existing construction and maintenance system? Will it add external coordination? Will it weaken control over customers and network resources? These are genuine concerns.

Therefore, for Shenzhen's practice to be understood in more regions, it must be explained clearly from the operator's perspective: The mechanism's value lies in helping operators reduce coordination costs, service risks, and on-site pressures caused by long-term disorder in public support facilities, ensuring a more stable user experience.

In terms of efficiency, operators are not the property owners of building communication support facilities. Equipment room keys, weak current well access, site access coordination, and resource registration often lie with property management, legacy management by developers, construction units, or intermediaries. The accountability mechanism transforms past reliance on personal coordination into standardized work like project verification, equitable access coordination, equipment room management, fault handling, inspections, and work order closure.

In terms of costs and risks, repeated communication, site access, and construction are essentially costs. User complaints, equipment room safety, line chaos, and unclear responsibilities also affect operator services. Platform traceability and closed-loop responsibility help operators prove, define, and drive rectification of responsibilities.

The value of rights and image is equally important. The independent accountability mechanism should safeguard operators' network resource ownership and operational boundaries. Operators' participation in collaborative governance and maintenance also demonstrates their professional management capabilities, user service capabilities, and public responsibility as central enterprises.

More importantly, the mechanism ensures equitable access for all operators through unified rules. If exclusive access, de facto monopolies, or damage or occupation of communication infrastructure occur, relevant entities should be investigated and dealt with according to policy documents and industry norms. At the same time, accountable enterprises are evaluated on whether they promptly detect, record, report, and drive solutions to such issues.

Ultimately, the value of collaborative governance and maintenance lies in helping operators provide services more efficiently and with lower risk in complex existing scenarios, ensuring their resource rights, customer relationships, and operational boundaries are fully respected and protected.

Regulators Also Need More Flexible Governance Tools

The difficulty in governing building communication infrastructure also lies in regulatory discretion. Relying solely on administrative orders can increase regulatory costs and may provoke resistance from market entities. Relying solely on market-driven coordination can lead to long-term inefficiency. Shenzhen's practice suggests finding a rule-based, platform-based, standardized, and accountability-driven path between administrative coercion and market laissez-faire.

This path does not make decisions for market entities but holds them accountable under unified rules. It does not wait passively for complaints but reduces the likelihood of issues through standards and platforms. It does not rely solely on manual inspections but enhances governance transparency through process recording and data traceability.

The inclusion of the Shenzhen Model as a model case by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology indicates its industry representativeness and observational value. However, a model case does not mean simple replication across regions. Different cities have varying building stock structures, operator collaboration foundations, property management levels, regulatory resource allocations, and marketization degrees.

If the Shenzhen Model has dissectible institutional elements, they include at least four points: relatively independent accountable entities, traceable platform data, relatively unified maintenance standards, and evaluable closed-loop responsibility. Only by addressing these elements well can local experiences be transformed into industry governance tools.

The Industry Needs a Deeper Discussion

Today's information and communications industry is no longer in a phase of simply competing on network coverage and construction speed. As 5G, gigabit optical networks, IoT, artificial intelligence, and digital city applications deepen, network quality, user experience, facility safety, resource efficiency, and governance capabilities are becoming new competitive dimensions.

Building communication infrastructure, as the critical link connecting public networks to end-users, should not remain in a state of 'emphasizing construction over maintenance' or 'focusing on single projects over long-term governance.' Shenzhen's collaborative governance and maintenance practice may not be the only answer or suitable for direct replication in all regions, but it raises a question worthy of serious industry consideration: Does the industry need a more refined, transparent, collaborative, and traceable governance mechanism?

From the perspective of regulators, the crux of the matter lies in bolstering the governance capabilities within the industry. For operators, it revolves around curbing service costs and compliance risks. For users, the focal point is whether they can access equitable and reliable communication services. For cities, the question is whether their digital infrastructure can adequately sustain future applications.

What the industry requires next may not merely be a discussion on “whether to promote the Shenzhen Model”. Instead, it should delve deeper into the following question: In the face of long-standing issues such as ambiguous responsibilities, inadequate maintenance, redundant construction, and the protection of user choice, can regions persist in relying on fragmented, makeshift, and low-transparency governance approaches?

This, perhaps, is the significance behind the typical case presented by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It is not about branding a specific location or enterprise; rather, it is about re-evaluating longstanding industry challenges through the lenses of public governance and industrial upgrading.