Rural villages in Shanghai will be connected to the city's
broadband Internet network within two years, Shanghai Telecom said
yesterday.
The network will cover all the more than 1,000 villages in the
city compared with 30 percent now, according to an agreement signed
between Shanghai Telecom and the Shanghai Agricultural Commission.
Shanghai Telecom will also invest one million yuan (US$125,000) to
train 1,000 information technology workers in villages, the
agreement said.
The plan is one of the city's efforts to narrow the digital gap
between downtown and suburban areas.
"We will use all kinds of resources, from investment, people and
services, to support the project to narrow the gap," said Zhang
Weihua, Shanghai Telecom's chairman.
The network will give villages access to information including
weather forecasts, agriculture material prices and pest-control
methods, according to the agricultural commission.
"The Internet will help me boost revenue by 20 percent as I can
start online trade," said a honey maker surnamed Gu.
Shanghai Telecom did not say how much its broadband packages
would cost villagers. "It is a natural move for Shanghai Telecom as
last year was a 'rural area expansion' year for carriers," said Yi
Mingyu, an analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting Co.
Telecom carriers, including China Telecom and China Mobile, are
expanding business in rural areas as cities are close to saturation
point, Yi said.
Shanghai's mobile phone penetration rate reached 90.5 percent at
the end of last year, according to the Shanghai Communications
Administration. By the end of September, China's telecommunications
carriers had established new Internet networks in 5,901 rural
towns, 98 percent of the total nationwide, said the Ministry of
Information Industry.
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(Shanghai Daily February 8, 2007)