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)