- China's MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) is set to sketch an energy-saving plan for its telecommunications industry, as part of the 12^th five-year plan for the period 2011-2015, to be issued within 2010, the Xinhua News Agency reported on August 18. The Ministry stated that the total electricity consumed by three Chinese leading telecom operators China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom totaled 14.1 billion kW in 2008 and these three telecom operators normally spend 12.1 billion RMB (US$1.8 billion; US$1 = 6.8 RMB) on electricity in total per year, according to the same source. In addition, the Ministry also plans to set up an energy saving standard for the telecom industry, while demanding all sectors in the telecom industry chain to deliver high-quality products with less energy consumption and low carbon emissions leveraging the state-of-art technologies.