It was a week of price-fixing allegations for Chinese telcos, while PCCW made plans for its IPO and Taiwan accelerated its 4G spectrum timetable.

 

The antitrust division of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) revealed this week that it was investigating the country’s two fixed-line operators, China Telecom and China Unicom, over alleged price fixing in the broadband access market.

 

Both operators said they are cooperating with the investigation. If they’re found guilty of anti-trust activity, they face penalties of up to 10% of their annual revenues from internet access services.

 

The revelations came just a day after China Telecom revealed plans to sell mobile services in the US under its own brand, initially as an MVNO, targeting Chinese expats and students, as well as frequent travelers between the two countries.

 

The anti-trust announcement also emerged just as Alcatel-Lucent announced it was chosen by Unicom as the lead supplier in a major FTTH deployment. Alca-Lu will supply GPON FTTH equipment to Unicom in 29 provinces for consumer broadband services.

 

It was also the week where Huawei Technologies firmly rejected claims that it supplied equipment to aid in internet monitoring and web censorship in Iran.

 

The Chinese vendor’s Device business unveiled its first own-brand smartphones for the UK market. The Vision smartphone is due later this quarter, and the MediaPad tablet early 2012.