CRI听力:China Boosts National Broadband Project

In residential communities in places such as Shandong, Shanghai and Guangzhou, fiber-to-the-home technology is beginning to become the norm.

Mr. Guo lives in a residential community in Shandong province. He says that, with FTTH, the internet speed in his home has risen from 2Mbps to 10Mbps, and now he is able to watch a movie through the internet and download files at the same time.

Although the internet speed is faster, the price remains the same at 60 yuan a month, or about 9.5 US dollars.

Currently, FTTH is benefiting more people than it has in the past, not only residential communities, but also in universities.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a large amount of telecom infrastructure will be built this year, and industrial investment focusing on broadband construction will reach 370 billion yuan.

In addition, more than 35 million households will be FTTH users this year, and 4M broadband or higher users will account for more than 50 percent of the total. Also, over 20 million households will be users of fixed broadband.

Although FTTH is something that has been highly welcomed by users, it is often refused by residential property management companies. Ning Hao from the marketing department of Shandong Telecom explains.

"Some residential property management companies ask a very high entrance fee from us based on the number of household in their community. Some of them even want a commission from users and charge an internet access fee. Such requirements put high pressure on us."

Some residential property management companies want to make a profit out of the project by choosing the service supplier, meaning that users don't really have much of a choice when it comes to telecom companies.

Shang Bing, deputy head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, says that they are making an effort to handle the problem.

China's broadband has gone through rapid development since 2002 when it began, but there is still a large disparity compared with the international level.
 
China's actual downloading capacity for the broadband network is only one half of that of the international average, ranking 71st in the world.

For CRI, I am Zhang Wan.