China aiming for high-speed Internet

BEIJING, CHINA: China will provide faster and cheaper Internet services over the next five years, an official said on Thursday.

Qin Hai, vice chief of industry and information technology ministry, said the country will expand average bandwidth to 20 megabytes per second for urban households by 2015.

In the capital cities of the provinces, average bandwidth is expected to reach 100MB.

Average bandwidth in rural areas will be raised to 4 megabytes per second, Qin said.

China Telecom, one of the country's largest Internet service providers, aims to boost its average broadband speed for urban users over the next three to five years while substantially lowering fees, said company official Guo Hao.

Guo said by 2015, the company will have more than 100 million customers using fiber optic connections in south China's urban areas.