China Country Report

1. FINAL INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON RURAL ICT DEVELOPMENT Rural ICT Initiatives & Public Private Partnership China Country Report

2. Introduction of Village-access Project In China, the telecom universal service is pushed based on the approach of the “Village-access Project”. January 16, 2004, the Ministry of Information and Industry enacted the “Notice on Developing the Village-access Project in Pilot Provinces and Regions” , and meanwhile enacted the “Rural Communications Universal service----Plan on Implementation of the Village-access Project ” as a solution in the transitional period when the universal service fund has not been completely set up. The “Village-access Project” requires the basic telecom operators undertake the obligations of the communications universal service with adopting the “area slicing contract system”.

3. Framework of the Village-access project Organizer: Ministry of Information and Industry (current Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) Executor: six state-owned basic telecom operators---- China Telecom, China Mobile, Chine Netcom, China Unicom, China Satcom and China Tietong Implementation time: From 2004 to 2010 or even more longer

4. Effects of the “Village-access Project” Goal: all villages have access to the phone; all towns have access to the Internet. Push the development of information technologies in the country. Year 2006-2009, “Village-access Project” accumulative total built telecom basic infrastructure for 20304 administrative villages, the administrative villages having phones had an increase of 2.76%, reached to 99.86%; accumulative total Help 76651 villages have access to phones, the proportion reached 93.4%; Up to the end of 2009, the proportion of town has internet access reached 99.3% in the whole country, 96.8% of the town has broadband.

5. Case Studys—— Broadband Access in Rural Areas of Guangxi Province Project Background Guangxi Province is located in the south part of China, occupying the southeastern verge of the Yungui Plateau. Since 2007, the Guangxi Branch of China Telecom has started to build the “Guangxi Modern Distance Education System”. The system is planned to cover 14359 administrative villages in this province, and provide 16754 terminal receivers of distance education

6. Case Studys—— Broadband Access in Rural Areas of Guangxi Province Project Background Guangxi Province is located in the south part of China, occupying the southeastern verge of the Yungui Plateau. Since 2007, the Guangxi Branch of China Telecom has started to build the “Guangxi Modern Distance Education System”. The system is planned to cover 14359 administrative villages in this province, and provide 16754 terminal receivers of distance education

7. Case Studys—— Broadband Access in Rural Areas of Guangxi Province The difficulties of Implementation Plan The distance education project puts forward higher requirements for the existing network. First of all, as the distance education platform provides real-time video and other services via stream media, it requires a high standard end-to-end delay, jitter and bit error rate of the IP bearer network. Secondly, it is one of the emphases and difficulties of the network support to connect all the broadband lines in every village of the province so as to enable the coverage of 16754 distance education terminal receivers in the whole province.

8. Case Studys—— Broadband Access in Rural Areas of Guangxi Province Implementation Plans The Distance Education System applies the IPTV technical mode which features broadband Internet + STB + TV set, which could extend the information-based channels from urban area to rural area, so as to construct an integrated information-based platform in the rural area. This system could provide a wide range of customized services such as graph-text information, video content and so on, meanwhile, it also enables distance education and a series of function required by the training, such as teaching management, learning support, teaching assistance and teaching result evaluation.

9. Case Studys—— Broadband Access in Rural Areas of Guangxi Province Implementation Plans • Generally speaking, the IPTV technical mode which features broadband Internet + STB + TV set provided by the Guangxi Branch of China Telecom possesses the following characteristics: • One point on the ground can make whole province • Stable operation • Small investment and fast-speed construction • Easy to maintain and

10. Case Studys—— Broadband Access in Rural Areas of Guangxi Province Implementation Steps Based on the coverage conditions of the existing network, the Guangxi Branch of China Telecom established phased construction plans for the year 2007, 2008 and 2009. At the beginning of project, with the main goal of supporting distance education and agricultural e-government, the Guangxi Brand decided to improve the coverage of the cable network and broadband in the rural areas, and gradually extend the cable network and broadband service to those administrative villages and the villages that could meet the related requirement. In the first and second-phased construction project, 2387 administrative villages got access to the cable line. It is estimated that 85% of the administrative villages in Guangxi Province will get access to the cable line and broadband Internet in March, 2009.

11. Case Studys—— Broadband Access in Rural Areas of Guangxi Province Implementation Result During the promotion process of distance education, agricultural e-government and other information-based applications in rural areas, the Guangxi Branch of China Telecom has given full play of the resource advantages of the communication infrastructures, and its role as the main force of informatization construction. Until April, 2008, 7000 administrative villages in Guangxi Province have gotten access to the broadband lines established by the Guangxi Branch of China Telecom. The broadband users in rural areas have reached 213 thousand. Compared to that of the beginning of 2006, which is 63 thousand, the increase rate is as high as 337%.

12. Thank you! China Academy of Telecom. Research, MIIT. Teleinfo institute Tel：86-10-62301302 86-10-62301730 Fax：86-10-62304136 Email：teleinfo@catr.com.cn