China plans to extend 4G coverage to a further 200 million households by the end of 2015.
It is just one of many ambitious targets set o ut late last week by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as part of its Broadband China programme, reported state news agency CNS on Monday.
To help it achieve its goal, China aims to build a further 600,000 4G base stations by the end of the year.
Even without these targets, the country’s largest operator by subscribers, China Mobile, has already reached some impressive 4G milestones.
By the end of 2014 the company had deployed 720,000 4G base stations, covering a population of approximately 1 billion. By the end of March the company had 143.1 million 4G customers.
Meanwhile, the MIIT also plans to roll out fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) to 40 million households, and to extend fixed Internet connectivity to a further 14,000 villages, by the end of the year. The aim is to provide a minimum connection speed of 8 Mbps to 55% of broadband customers.
As previously mentioned, the 2015 targets fall under the Broadband China programme, which will see the government spend a massive $327 billion to provide nationwide broadband coverage by 2020.
