WCA January 2016

news Industry

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China’s $22bn broadband plan will connect 30m households China plans to invest nearly $22 billion to provide 50,000 villages and 30 million rural households with high-speed broadband by 2020. A statement, released after a state council executive meeting presided over by premier Li Keqiang, said stronger telecom services will help attract investment and fuel coordinated development, narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas. The meeting urged more input from the central budget, more support from local policies and capital, more telecom construction and maintenance from private capital, more public-private partnerships, and a stricter supervision of subsidies. The meeting also stressed the importance of e-commerce, saying faster expansion of e-commerce in rural areas will stimulate consumption, benefit farmers and support the real economy. Xinhua reports that China’s state council recently released a plan promoting a nationwide project to deliver telecom, radio, television and Internet services over a single broadband connection. The three-network convergence project is aimed at integrating data transmission infrastructure and facilitating information sharing. The government will support the research and development of key equipment needed to converge the networks. Optical fibre will replace copper wires to improve Internet speed and transmission capacity, and Internet bandwidth will be increased, especially in rural areas.

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