iWorld
China Telecom seeks foreign strategic partner
MUMBAI: China Telecom is in search of an international strategic partner. The Hong Kong-listed unit of China’s biggest fixed-line operator, through such an alliance, aims to raise its profile in global telecommunications.
China Telecom chairman Wang Xiaochu said the company would eventually seek to bring in foreign strategic investors, to benefit from international management experience. According to Wang, the company hasn’t initiatied any formal talks with potential investor or partner.
In April this year, the state-run parent of China Netcom Group, China Telecom’s biggest domestic rival, bought a 20 per cent stake in PCCW. PCCW Limited is the largest communications provider in Hong Kong and one of Asia’s leading IT&T players.
According to Wang, the company expects broadband, mobile and fixed-line operations to each contribute a third of its revenue by that time. Wang made the comments after the company’s annual general meeting in Hong Kong, the first one it has held in the territory and a rarity among H-share companies.
China Telecom currently doesn’t have any mobile services, but it offers a localized wireless service known as Personal Handyphone System, or Xiaolingtong. Internet services, mainly broadband, contributed 9 per cent of the company’s total revenue in 2004. Local telephone services, including fixed-line, phone booths and Xiaolingtong, took up half of total revenue.
Wang expects broadband subscriber growth this year to exceed last year’s, when new additions reached 6.6 million. At the end of March, China Telecom had 15.7 million broadband customers.
Wang said the company’s Internet Protocol Television service, which began a trial run late last year, has about 40,000 users. The service is now available in Shanghai and several main cities in Guangdong province.
iWorld
Meta shutters standalone Messenger website from April 2026
Desktop chats redirect to facebook.com/messages, mobile app remains unaffected for web-independent users.
MUMBAI: Messenger’s web independence is signing off proving that even in the digital age, some chats just can’t escape the Facebook family reunion. Meta has confirmed it will pull the plug on messenger.com as a standalone site starting April 2026, automatically redirecting desktop visitors to facebook.com/messages to keep conversations flowing. The update, posted on the company’s help pages and first spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, comes with pop-up notifications on both the Messenger site and app.
The change follows Meta’s earlier retirement of the dedicated Messenger desktop apps for Windows and Mac, which already funnelled users to Facebook’s web interface. For those who’ve deactivated their Facebook accounts but still use Messenger via browser, the move shrinks options further leaving only the mobile app as a lifeline. Chat history stays safe through the secure backup PIN process (with a reset option if forgotten), but web access without a Facebook login is effectively over.
This is the latest twist in Messenger’s long identity crisis. Born as Facebook Chat in 2008, it spun off into a standalone app in 2011 and got fully separated from the main Facebook mobile app in 2014 to boost its own adoption. Yet the pendulum has swung back, since 2023, Facebook has been quietly reintegrating Messenger features into its core platform, slowly dissolving the walls between the two.
Meta frames the shift as a streamlining move consolidating messaging under one roof to simplify infrastructure and user experience. But for the corner of users who preferred Messenger’s lighter, less Facebook-tied web version, it’s a step that feels more like consolidation than convenience.
Whether you’re a die-hard desktop chatter or just someone who logs in occasionally, the message is clear: in Meta’s world, going solo online is becoming a relic. From April 2026, if you’re on a computer, expect the redirect and perhaps a gentle nudge back toward the full Facebook fold.
