By the end of the first quarter this year, project "extend telecommunication service to every village" has reached 620,000 villages that were formerly the telecommunication blind areas. Relevant officials with State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) and the Ministry of Information Industry demanded major telecommunication operators to further sharpen the awareness, work in a down-to-earth manner and spare no effect in carrying out the project so as to realise the project objective according to schedule.

Speaking at the SCDMA Telecommunication Service Project Exchange Conference held in Beijing on Apr. 21, Su Jinsheng, director of Telecommunication Administration Bureau under Ministry of Information Technology, noted that Project "extend telecommunication service to every village" is an important guarantee to popularise telecommunication service and serve the "three rurals" --agriculture, countryside and farmers, and play a vital role in developing impoverished rural areas. The project aims to extend the telecommunication service to 95 percent of administrative villages across the country by the end of this year.

From the beginning of the project in January 2004 to the end of the first quarter this year, the project has reached 9,737 villages that were formerly the telecommunication "blind areas" and nearly 620,000 administrative villages. However, among all the 110 million new telephone users across the countries last year, rural users were only 9.94 million, accounting for nine percent of the nation's total. The prospect of rural telecommunication in China is not very bright.

Wang Xiaoqi, deputy director of the Industry Planning Division under SASAC, said that central enterprise is the leading force of the state-owned economy, which bore the most importance task of the national economic development. SASAC hopes that large-scale enterprises should play a better role in building a harmonious society. Various telecommunication operators should cooperate well, shoulder the responsibility and give support to the implementation of the project in the process of improving the rural economic environment in China.

By People's Daily Online