But together, along with other recent telecom failures and those still likely to occur, they represent one of the most spectacular investment debacles ever.
The severe winter weather has cut a trail of devastation and despair, paralyzing the national rail and road networks in a season when they are normally at their busiest, stranding millions of migrant workers on their way home for the Chinese lunar new year holidays, as well as causing severe power blackouts and telecom failures.
From 1998 to 2008, there were over 200 telecom company failures, including bankruptcies, closing shop or going up for distressed sales to competitors.
"In recent incidents clients told us they found plans were out-of-date, contact details were incorrect and the telecoms network suffered failures making voice and data communications difficult," he says.
Becky Bond, vice-president and political director of Credo Mobile, an independent telecoms company, said failure to pass Tier II would be a disaster for the internet.
Officials considering the initiatives say they are merely responding to a market failure: telecoms firms have been slow to deploy Wi-Fi networks, and charge high fees for broadband.
One of ECS's backers is John Mayo, whose past career at Marconi, a maker of telecoms equipment, ended in a sensational failure—"Take Mayo with a large pinch of salt", ran one recent headline.
By 2002 Labour was forced to responded to a wave of public outrage sparked by the "rewards for failure" for directors of the failed telecoms company Marconi by giving shareholders an advisory vote on pay.
A telecoms law passed in December was "shameful" in its failure to attack the privileges of phone companies and broadcasters, says Eduardo Stein, a former vice-president.
In February, the regulator Ofcom proposed that telecoms firms should be forced to pay automatic compensation for service failures.
