BEIJNG, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- China has been working on increasing Internet connection speeds and cutting service fees in high gear since the beginning of 2018 to promote growth of the information consumption.
In July, 2018, China abolished the domestic data roaming fees, a further step taken by the country to cut cost for increasing digital Chinese consumers.
According to a statistics report on China's Internet development released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), as of June 2018, the number of Internet users in China reached 802 million, with the Internet penetration rate at 57.7 percent.
At the end of November, data of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) showed increases in penetration of the fixed broadband and mobile broadband.
To be specific, China's fixed broadband household penetration rate and mobile broadband user penetration rate reached 85 percent and 93 percent, respectively. The fiber user penetration rate reached 88 percent and the rate of 4G penetration among users reached 74 percent.
Apart from the rising Internet users, the speed of the network has also increased a lot. The MIIT data shows that as of the end of November, the average download rate of the fixed broadband had been 25 megabytes per second (Mbps), while that of the 4G networks had been 21 Mbps.
The improvement in the network speed has boosted domestic information consumption.
Relevant official of the MIIT said that in the first three quarters, China saw its information consumption reach 3.6 trillion yuan, with further digital application in public services such as medical care and education and the integrated development of manufacturing and Internet.
Data of China's three telecom giants also shows the achievements in the cost cuts. As of November, China Mobile saw the average unit price of its mobile Internet traffic and the international roaming traffic fall 61 percent and 50 percent year on year. The average unit price of China Telecom's mobile Internet traffic dropped more than 65 percent. The average unit price of China Unicom's mobile Internet traffic decreased 57.4 percent compared with the end of 2017.
Telecommunications experts said that the network speed-up and fee reduction have provided broader application space for new information technologies such as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. (Edited by Hu Pingchao, hupingchao@xinhua.org)
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