China to extend telecommunication service to 95% villages

May 17, 2005 marks the 36th World Telecommunication Day and the theme of this year is "Let's go into action and create a fair information-equipped society".

As is learned from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), the project "extend telecommunication service to every villages" organised by MII aims at changing the imbalance of telecommunication service in urban and rural areas, and creating a fair information-equipped society. Since the launch of the project one year ago, it has made remarkable success. Telecommunication service has reached 9,357 formerly telecommunication blind villages last year, and it is estimated that 28,384 administrative villages will be equipped with telecommunication services by the end of this year. Till then, telecommunication service will reach 95 percent of the administrative villages across the country, thus realising the objective of the Tenth-Five-Year plan.

In accordance to the Telecommunication Regulations, MII took vigorous measures and appointed six basic telecommunication operators including China Telecom and China Mobile to raise fund independently and implement the telecommunication services in the formerly telecommunication blind regions in the forms of dividing up the work and assigning a part to each. So far, the telecommunication coverage in rural areas is less than 90 percent, and approximately 60,000 administration villages are still telecommunication blind. The project "extend telecommunication service to every village" still shoulders heavy responsibilities.

By People's Daily Online