CHINA Unicom will invest heavily in the next three years in Shanghai to lower the fee for family broadband services and improve its network in its bid to challenge the dominance of China Telecom in the local broadband market.

Its move came in response after the government started an anti-monopoly investigation into the high broadband prices charged by the telcos and complaints of low services.

"We are glad to give consumers one more choice and we now provide more price-competitive products," Cai Quangen, China Unicom's Shanghai branch general manager, said yesterday.

China Unicom's family broadband services cost about 130 yuan (US$20) monthly, 50 percent cheaper than China Telecom's fee. China Unicom, the No. 2 telco in the country, provides network bandwidth of 10 megabytes per second, similar with China Telecom which has 85 percent of the local broadband market.