The Chinese Government is aiming to connect 95 per cent of villages to universal telecom services by the end of the year, a high-ranking official said yesterday.

Xi Guohua, vice-minister of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) made the pledge at a ceremony to mark the 37th annual World Telecom Day.

"We will spare no efforts to speed up telecommunications availability in central and western China and rural areas to ensure balanced development," he said.

"Creating an Equitable Information Society: Time for Action" is the theme for this year's Telecom Day.

"With the globalization of the world economy and fast development of information and communication technologies, the digital divide has already become a global issue," Xi added.

As one of the world's most active markets, China has so far recruited more than 325 million fixed-line subscribers and 349 million mobile phone users.

Meanwhile, it has registered more than 98.8 million Internet users.

However, there are sharp contrasts between China's western, coastal and urban areas and its rural regions.

Acknowledging the imbalance in development, Xi said the Chinese Government is to accelerate the construction of telecom infrastructure in rural areas to improve the situation.

In fact, MII launched a "Cuntong" project last year, designed to speed up the connection of all villages in rural areas. The country's six major telecom operators all participated in the programme.

Latest government figures show that a total of 628,000 villages have been connected so far, with 9,357 newly-connected last year.

In the first quarter of the year, 25.4 per cent of newly-added telephone users were from rural areas, 1.5 per cent more than during the same period last year.

Nevertheless, there are still more than 50,000 villages in China which remain unconnected.

"We will also turn to new technologies and telecom services to drive up the telecommunications development in rural areas this year," the vice minister stressed.

Currently, SCDMA (Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access), also call the "Big Smart" wireless phone service, is being adopted by major telecom operators realizing the "Cuntong" project.

(China Daily May 18, 2005)