China today said it would invest USD 70 billion to increase Internet speeds and expand broadband access in rural areas by this year, as the country strives to boost growth by unleashing the potential of its more than 648 million web users.
According to guidelines issued by the Chinese central cabinet, China plans to spend more than 430 billion yuan (USD 70.4 billion) in 2015 and more than 700 billion yuan total in 2016 and 2017 on Internet infrastructure.
The guidelines said China will accelerate building of high-speed broadband networks and improve Internet access in more than 14,000 villages by the end of 2015, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
By the end of 2017, the average cable broadband speed for users in major cities will be increased to 30 megabytes per second (Mbps), more than triple the current speed, while that in smaller cities will be upgraded to 20 Mbps.
The telecom market will continue to be opened and more competition will be encouraged, through policies including expanding a pilot scheme for broadband services this year, according to the guidelines.
The State Council also vowed to expand the 4G network to cover the whole of China by the end of 2017. It urged telecom operators to improve services and cut charges for Internet usage.
Many blame the slow speeds of Internet in China to massive firewall intervention to control the content on the web to weed out anti-government materials.
As a result Google and related websites can not be operated without the virtual private network (VPN) services.
The guidelines came just a month after Premier Li Keqiang criticised Internet services for being expensive and slow.
Analysts said faster and cheaper Internet connections will help promote the country's "Internet Plus" scheme, a new strategy introduced by Li in March to integrate mobile Internet, cloud computing and the Internet of Things with modern manufacturing to form a new engine for growth.
As China's economic growth has slowed, it is striving to unleash the economic potential of its Internet users, who numbered 648 million at the end of 2014, giving the country the world's largest online population.
Under an action plan issued by the Ministry of Commerce, China is aiming to boost its 2016 e-commerce transactions to 22 trillion yuan, from 13.4 trillion yuan recorded for 2014, and lift the annual value of online retail sales to 5.5 trillion yuan in 2016, up from 2.8 trillion yuan in 2014.
