Broadband now connects 91% of China's villages

BEIJING: Broadband now connects 91 per cent of villages in China as part of the government's efforts to provide Internet facility to the vast nation's remote areas.

Coverage has increased from 88 per cent at the beginning of 2013 with 19,000 more villages being connected to the Internet this year, the Industry and Information Technology Ministry said.

The three major telecom operators, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, have invested more than 6 billion yuan (almost a billion U.S. dollars) this year in villages.

In terms of telephones, 95.6 per cent of villages with at least 20 households now have coverage, up from 95.2 per cent at the start of 2013, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Chinese Internet users hit 604 million as of the end of September this year, according to the State Internet Information Office.