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Thirty one Chinese and joint venture operators, including several map service providers affiliated with Chinese portals Baidu.com and Sina.com, and a dozen state-owned research institutes or mapping bureaus, were granted Internet map service licenses by China amid security concerns, media reports said.
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Operators who were granted a class-A license by the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM) included a national-level map publisher, and Nokia Alliance Internet Services Company, the only foreign company, which is a joint venture between Nokia and New Alliance that is part of the Shanghai Alliance Investment Limited.
However, it was unclear whether Internet search engine company Google has got the license to operate maps though an earlier media report had said Google had not applied for the Internet map service licenses.
"Although Google has made some initial contact with us, it has not officially submitted an application," SBSM deputy director general Song Chaozhi told China Daily.
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Google and Microsoft, have no license to operate Chinese maps in their service and Song said qualified online map service providers were required to keep servers that stored map data inside the country and must have no record of information leakage in any form over the past three years.
Google will send a senior executive to China soon to talk with the bureau about the licensing issue, he said. However, the report said Marsha Wang, spokesperson for Google China had refused to comment on whether it had submitted an application or whether it will send an executive to China.
Google had recently renewed its license to operate in China after a row with the Chinese government over privacy laws.
Operators who obtain a class-A license will be allowed to conduct services including map searching and locations, marking geographic information, downloading and copying of maps, and map transmissions and quotations.
However, companies with Class-B licenses will be restricted from offering services of map searching and locations, as well as geographic information marking, state run Xinhua news agency reported.
All Internet map services providers will have to apply for a license, while those operating without the license will be prosecuted in China, the report quoted an official from the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping as saying without elaborating on the deadline for license applications.
Foreign-owned or foreign-invested Internet firms can apply for the license in the capacity of joint ventures or through cooperation with Chinese businesses, the report said quoting the official.
An earlier media report said Microsoft-owned search engine Bing had also not applied for the Internet map service licenses in China sparking speculation about its future operations in the world’s largest populous country.
