(TibetanReview.net, May19, 2018) – China said May 17 that it will spend some 3 billion yuan (US$ 471 million) to connect 98 percent of administrative villages in the Tibet Autonomous Region with optical fibre communication under a universal telecom service project by the end of this year.
“The newly-established network has greatly enriched entertainment for local farmers and herdsmen, informed them of the latest knowledge and news, and enabled them to stay in touch with family members via video calls,” China’s official Xinhua news agency May 17 quoted the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as saying.
The report said that since 2016, pilot programmes had been carried out to provide over 5,000 villages in the vast region with universal access to broadband services and faster optical fibre connection.
Describing the universal telecom service project as part of China’s poverty alleviation efforts in Tibet, the report said the telecom project had linked 1,452 administrative villages in deep-poverty areas into the optical fibre network in 2017, with another 955 being set to be ready for broadband connection this year.
“More will be done to promote broadband access in impoverished villages to facilitate poverty alleviation,” the report quoted Wen Ku, director of the telecom development department at the ministry, as saying, speaking of the project’s objective for the whole of the People’s Republic of China.
