China is still assessing a case in which China Telecom and China Unicom are accused of monopolistic policies in the broadband-Internet market.

The National Development and Reform Commission said it was still evaluating whether the two firms had kept promises to resolve problems that prompted the launch of an investigation in 2011.

The carriers were accused of manipulating broadband prices and the use of core network resources.

If found guilty, the two, which account for 90 percent of China's broadband business, could face fines of up to 10 percent of their annual revenue from Internet services.

However, the companies had significantly raised bandwidth speed and gradually opened their backbone networks over the three years since, NDRC said in an online briefing.

And broadband prices had fallen by 40 percent since 2011, it said.

The government conducted its anti-monopoly investigation related to concerns that the top two broadband carriers were preventing smaller players from entering the market and keeping prices for broadband services artificially high.