BEIJING, May 17 (Xinhua) -- China plans to expand 4G communication coverage to over 98 percent of its administrative villages and improve rural internet penetration rate significantly by 2020, according to guidelines on digital village development released by the State Council recently.
The document proposes making major digital village construction breakthroughs by 2025, in rural 4G popularization, 5G innovative application and significantly narrowing digital gap between urban and rural areas.
The guidelines lay down ten specific tasks such as rural information infrastructure construction, rural digital economy development and strengthening supply for agriculture and rural scientific and technological innovations.
Industry observers predict that investment in rural internet construction will exceed 100 billion yuan during 2018-2020 and will keep a rapid growth in coming years.
Rural information infrastructure construction will usher in an outbreak period involving at least hundreds of billions yuan of investment, experts predict. (Edited by Niu Huizhe, niuhuizhe@xinhua.org)
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