Others News
- Shanghai News
Date: 14-Mar-2007 Sources: (Xinhua Online)
Shanghai - an increasingly wired metropolis - is rivaling other world cities in the growth of its information-technology services.
Half of the city's families surf the Internet via broadband, and 90 percent of permanent residents own a mobile phone, just to name two indicators cited Tuesday in a new report from the city's IT development regulator.
The level of broadband penetration is similar to the rate in United States and beats the United Kingdom by one percentage point, according to researchers Parks Associates and Point Topic.
Meanwhile, Shanghai has embarked on an aggressive IT expansion campaign to benefit both its citizens and the economic prospects of its industries.
Local gross domestic product from the city's IT sector - Shanghai's pillar industry - jumped 21.8 percent last year to 133.79 billion yuan (17.15 billion U.S. dollars), accounting for 13 percent of the local total. IT industry exports amounted to 3.7 billion dollars, 32 percent of the total.
Software industry revenue reached 61.67 billion yuan in 2006, growing 35.5 percent. Integrated-circuit revenue was 38 billion yuan, up 26 percent.
Local government will continue to invest heavily in four chief technologies this year: integrated circuits, mobile communications, solid-slate lighting and flat-panel displays.
Shanghai will start building a wireless network that will cover the entire city and import advanced supercomputers that can perform 100 trillion calculations a second. The city will also construct third-generation telecommunications networks, build several factories for advanced semiconductors, develop a Sino-U.S. undersea cable providing 60 times more communications capacity than the present system and improve its IT-based government services.
'IT applications cover every aspect of the people's lives, and we will establish the city as an information hub to welcome World Expo 2010,' said Zhou Weidong, general secretary of the city's IT commission.
Shanghai's Internet users reached 9.57 million at the end of last year, about half of all permanent residents and seven percent of the national figure.
Ninety-one percent of local families reported having at least one computer, and 3.02 million families were using broadband Internet services.
Shanghai Telecom has invested heavily to upgrade its local network to provide Internet access speed of six megabits per second, triple the current level, said equipment makers.
The government has also pledged to strengthen the IT infrastructure serving 400 suburban schools in 2007.
Among the other IT indicators, Shanghai has surpassed Harbin to become the country's top city for Internet-linked TV services, and the number of its mobile phone users reached 16.09 million at the end of last year.
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