The total length of optical cable in China is expected to double
during the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-2005) to 2.5 million kilometers,
500,000 kilometers of which will be long-distance optical cables.
This forecast comes
from the ongoing "New-Century Optical Fiber and Optical
Cable Market Outlook and Application Forum," hosted by
the Comprehensive Planning Department (CPD) of the Ministry
of Information Industry (MII).
At the meeting,
CPD Deputy Director Wang Jianzhang, in a speech entitled "China's
Optical Cable Transmission Construction and Development Plan,"
said that preliminary statistics show domestic fiber-optic
output reached 5 million kilometers in 1999, and the production
of optical cables totaled 418,000 kilometers. Additionally,
59,000 transmission system units were produced by the 26 Chinese
optical electronic manufacturers.
Wang said that
the total length of optical cable trunk lines would reach
1.2 million kilometers this year. The nationwide optical cable
network now covers more than 75 percent of Chinese cities
and counties and 85 percent of China's rural administrative
villages have phone access.
The framework for
administrative information networks and simultaneous management
networks has been built, and the Internet protocol network
has begun initial operations. Registered Web users (excluding
the dial-number Web users) will reach 7 million this year,
the article said.
Wang also pointed
out that the 2.5 million kilometers of optical cable expected
to be in place by the end of the 10th Five-Year Plan would
form a network that covers most Chinese cities and rural areas.
The extensive increase
in fiber-optic network coverage will definitely boost the
development of landlines and mobile phones in China. By the
end of the 10th Five-Year Plan, China is expected to have
230 million landline phone users, with 8-percent growth in
cities and 20-percent growth in rural areas. Meanwhile, the
number of mobile phone users is expected to increase 26 percent
annually to reach 230 million.
Wei Leping, president
of the Telecommunication Research Institute of the MII, said
at the meeting that preliminary figures indicate that China's
online data processing volume is likely to overtake voice
mail business volume in the next five to 10 years. It may
take only three years for the backbone networks to realize
the change, however. Wei also said that in the next five years,
the number of IP users would increase by 54 percent annually.
Provincial backbone broadband networks will grow at 200 percent
annually over the same period. Wei pointed out that uncertainties
in the IP network would lead to uncertainties in Internet
resources.
At the forum, many
Chinese telecommunication companies and equipment manufactures
have expressed a wide range of views on the future development
of China's fiber-optic and optical cable transmission and
optical fiber technology.
Participating companies
include China Telecom, China Mobile, Changfei Corp., Wuhan
Post & Telecommunication Institute, Lucent Technologies
(Beijing), Shenzhen Huawei Technologies and Corning Inc.
(People's Daily 10/17/2000)
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