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China to invest US$177 billion on broadband and 4G network

CHINA will invest more than 1.1 trillion yuan (US$177.4 billion) by 2017 on broadband and 4G network upgrade, part of the national strategy to encourage information consumption, the State Council said yesterday in a statement.

China plans to invest 430 billion yuan in 2015 to improve network structure and additional 700 billion yuan in 2016 and 2017. The carriers are required to cut rate and improve speed of mobile and broadband network services, according to the Sate Council, or China’s cabinet.

By the end of 2015, more than 80 percent of urban families are able to access to broadband networks with bandwidth of 100 megabytes second, five times of current level. By 2015, the carriers are expected to establish 1.3 million 4G base stations to cover rural areas including 14,000 villages. The country will have more than 300 million 4G users nationwide, double the current level, according to the statement.

The country will further open the telecommunications market on broadband and other sectors, which are dominated by state-owned giants like China Mobile and China Telecom. More than 100 private firms are expected to get permission to access to domestic telecom market and trigger related investment of 10 billion yuan.

By 2017, the telecommunications market will be open nationwide, compared with 16 cities now.

The improved 4G and broadband network speed and additional users will give a 20-percent boost to China’s information consumption volume in 2015, mainly in e-commerce, online education and Internet-based healthcare sectors, analysts said.

The revenue of the information consumption market will hit 3.2 trillion yuan this year, according to earlier estimates by the Ministry of Commerce.

China Mobile and China Unicom posted weak monthly user growth rate in April because consumers cancelled low-speed 2G subscription contracts, the country's top mobile carriers said yesterday.

In April, China Mobile posted to add 578,000 users to 816 million as total user base, compared with the 4.6 million added users in March. China Unicom, the country’s No. 2 mobile carrier, lost 2.53 million users in April to have a total user base of 292 million.

China Unicom added 691,000 4G and 3G users in April but it lost 3.22 million 2G users in the month.

The increased network speed and rich Internet-based services will attract more users to subscribe to 3G and 4G services.




 

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