Broadband China Strategy officially announced

The State Council recently issued the "Broadband China Strategy" and Implementation Plan. Yesterday (August 19th), relevant officials from the National Development and Reform Commission stated that China’s broadband population penetration rate and broadband access level are still far from developed countries. However, the status of public infrastructure such as broadband and water, electricity, and road equivalence is clearly defined at the national level, which is a major breakthrough in the construction of China's information infrastructure.

Some scholars told the reporter of the “Daily Economic News” that from the perspective of our country, we are currently in a critical period of accelerating the transformation of economic development methods and building a well-off society in an all-round way. Broadband is playing an increasingly important role in the development of economy, society, and science and technology. The role. The implementation plan has increased the past industrial strategy to the national strategy and it is of great significance.

With the official announcement of China’s broadband strategy, the future of China’s network development will gradually broaden. The 100M broadband home has become more and more clear.

There is still a gap between international standards

Just last weekend, China’s Broadband Development Alliance, the authoritative organization of the broadband industry in China, released the first “China Broadband Rate Status Report” in Beijing, which announced the user experience rate of fixed broadband users accessing the Internet.

According to this report, in the first half of this year, the average download speed of China's fixed broadband Internet network reached 2.93 Mbit/s, of which Beijing ranked second with an average rate of 3.41 Mbit/s. From the perspective of each province, Shanghai has the highest average download speed of 4.28Mbit/s, and it is also the only province with more than 4Mbit/s.

The fact that China's network is slow is recognized by the National Development and Reform Commission. Yesterday, relevant officials from the National Development and Reform Commission stated that the problems of slow Internet access, uneven regional and urban-rural development, inadequate application of broadband services, insufficient original innovation capacity, and severe network information security are still prominent.

According to data from the National Development and Reform Commission, in terms of broadband penetration rate and Internet access rate, there is a big gap between China and developed countries. Although China’s broadband population penetration rate exceeds the global average of 8%, it is far below the 25.6% penetration rate of developed countries, 40 % of users still use broadband access below 4Mbps, which is much lower than the mainstream rate of 18Mbps in developed countries.

Not only that, in terms of broadband development in the region and in urban and rural areas, the broadband population penetration rate in the central and western regions was lower than that in the east by 6.7 and 7.3% respectively. The penetration rate of rural broadband population was only 6.3%, which was lower than the city's 12.6%.

Zeng Jianqiu told the reporter of the “Daily Economic News” that “it is a normal phenomenon to talk about regional imbalances. China is so big that the economic development in the east and west is not balanced, that is, the internal economic level of the same developed region will also have Differences, so we have to differentiate in the process of formulating strategies. I think it is normal and understandable."

Huge funds rely on policy support

While interpreting the broadband China strategy, the National Development and Reform Commission has already painted a blueprint for the future of online life.

By 2015, the penetration rate of fixed broadband households will reach 50%, and the proportion of broadband access in administrative villages will reach 95%. Broadband access will be basically achieved for public institutions such as schools, libraries, and hospitals. Especially in terms of broadband access capacity of urban and rural households, the basic level of 20M and 4M will be reached in 2015, and some developed cities will reach 100M.

"Broadband strategy itself is to solve the problem of not enough fast speed and not enough bandwidth." Zeng Jianqiu pointed out that the slow speed of broadband in China will be solved slowly. "For example, now we have 4 megabits of network equivalent to open 4 Lanes, by 2020, the 50-megabit network is 50 lanes. Will it be slower then? Naturally solved."

Such a magnificent blueprint cannot be separated from the financial support. Industry experts also believe that this will be an issue that cannot be bypassed in the implementation of broadband China.

There have been reports quoting experts saying that if we are to achieve the target of “according to the realization of achieving broadband access users of 250 million by 2015, urban families with average access speeds of more than 20M and rural areas reaching an average of 4M or more”, a single operator will build a nationwide The total cost of broadband networks will reach 200 billion to 280 billion yuan, and the total construction cost of the three major operators will exceed 600 billion yuan.

“For the western region, there will be general service funds, and at the same time, private capital can also be added to this through openness.” Zeng Jianqiu believes that with respect to funding issues, there will be various forms to solve the entire strategy implementation process, regardless of the market approach. Or the way of policy guidance, from the current level of China's economic development, it is not difficult to solve this problem.

In fact, policy guidance has already started. In the broadband China strategy, it has been clearly stated that it is necessary to increase the support for financial funds.

The State Council stated that it is necessary to improve the telecommunications universal service compensation mechanism and form a long-term mechanism to support broadband development in the rural and central and western regions. At the same time, make full use of various types of central special funds to guide local related funds to invest in the R&D and industrialization of broadband networks, and provide discounted interest loans for broadband construction projects in eligible national development zones in the western region.

"Broadband strategy is not a high-cost strategy but a low-cost, high-efficiency strategy." Zeng Jianqiu said.