MIIT to push broadband usage and construction

An official from China's telecom regulator said at a forum Wednesday that the Chinese government will launch a program this year including fiscal supports to speed up the country's broadband construction nationwide.

The government will launch a project this year to promote fiber-optic broadband network construction in urban areas and expand the usage of broadband in rural regions, Zhang Feng, director of the telecommunications development department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said at the Broadband Communication and M2M Summit 2013 in Beijing.

By the end of the year, the number of newly built 3G base stations is expected to reach 180,000 nationwide, and the number of new broadband users this year will probably exceed 250 million, said Zhang.

Analysts said the usage of broadband plays an important role in stimulating a country's economic growth.

"A 10 percent increase in usage of fixed-line broadband will stimulate a country's economy to grow by 1.8 percent, and a 10 percent increase in mobile broadband usage will stimulate a 2.3 percent growth," Liu Duo, deputy director of MIIT's telecom research institute, said at the same forum Wednesday.

The popularity rate of broadband in China was 12.83 percent, only half of that of the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to Liu.

Inadequate Internet connection speed is one of the major issues Chinese broadband users have encountered. The speed of broadband in China ranks lower than half of the world's countries and much lower than developed countries.

Around 40 percent of Chinese broadband users connect to the Internet at 4 megabits per second, much slower than the average speed of 18 megabits per second in developed countries.

Zhang also noted that the number of new 3G users is expected to exceed 100 million this year.

The total number of 3G users in China reached 230 million by the end of 2012, according to the MIIT.