The file photo taken on July 3, 2013 shows a staff member (R) of China Mobile shows to customers how to surf the Internet using the 4G technology in Guiyang, capital of southwest China's Guizhou Province. The State Council has recently elevated national broadband development as a national strategy and announced an implementation timetable for its development over the coming eight years. Photo: Xinhua

 

The file photo taken on April 15, 2013 shows a staff member of the Great Wall Broadband Network introduces "super-broadband service" with the speed of 100 Mbps in north China's Tianjin Municipality. The State Council has recently elevated national broadband development as a national strategy and announced an implementation timetable for its development over the coming eight years. Photo: Xinhua

China aims to provide broadband access to all urban and rural areas by 2020, so as to enable Chinese residents to enjoy more opportunities and convenience brought about by the fast development of broadband, the State Council said Saturday.

It is the first time for the country to announce a specific timetable for the development of broadband as "a national strategy," according to the announcement.

By 2015, half of the Chinese households are expected to use fixed broadband, 3G mobile coverage rate is expected to reach 32.5 percent, and fiber-to-home services will cover all urban areas, it said.

"The national strategy will bring huge business opportunities to the telecommunication and Internet sectors and related enterprises, such as the three telecom operators (China Unicom, China Mobile, and China Telecom)," a senior engineer from a State-owned telecommunication company who preferred not to be named, told the Global Times Sunday.

The move will also create huge opportunities for the small and medium-sized Internet enterprises, the engineer said.

But an industry watcher also pointed to major challenges in implementing the national strategy.

"The cost for laying the basic infrastructure for mobile broadband in rural areas is huge, and it is unrealistic to expect the three telecom operators to complete the project by themselves without government support," Zhu Jinsong, an analyst with China Galaxy Securities Co, told the Global Times Sunday.

The announcement said the central government will provide fiscal support including setting up a special fund for the broadband construction in the countryside as well as the central and western regions of China.

Zhu said more specific measures including cooperation among different ministries are needed to complete this plan.

The strategy aims to provide broadband speed of 20 megabits per second (Mbps) in urban areas, and 4Mbps in rural areas by 2015, according to the State Council's announcement.

The broadband speed is expected to reach 50Mbps in urban areas and 12Mbps in rural areas by 2020.

Households in some developed cities could even enjoy the speed of 1 gigabit per second by 2020, said the announcement.

These targets for broadband speed are good news for the Internet users, especially the youth who are heavy users of Internet, because slow connection is one of the major issues in the current Internet access in China.

"It would be more convenient and faster to shop and play online if both fixed and mobile broadband speeds are accelerated," Mao Wenlong, a 24-year-old staff member at a gas station in Hami, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, told the Global Times in a telephone interview on Sunday.

The average download speed for Chinese broadband users in the first half of the year was only 2.93Mbps, the Broadband Development Alliance said.