The construction of an Information Superhighway worth US$66.21
million by the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) member countries will
commence soon, announced Han Yihu, an official with China Telecom.
He was speaking at a forum on business participation in the GMS in
Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan
Province on Sunday.
According to the plan, in the first phase of the program between
2005 and 2008, the six GMS countries - Cambodia, China, Laos,
Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam - will build a point-to-point optical
transmission system, laying the infrastructure foundations for
future smooth telecommunication connections in the region.
When the point-to-point transmission system reaches a certain
penetration rate, the GMS nations will put in place the ring
networks between 2009 and 2010, which will support greater
transmission capacities and remove telecommunication barriers in
the region, Han said.
The third phase will be the launch of a wide range of
international communication services including e-commerce,
e-government, e-education, e-health, based on the network platform
built in the previous two phases.
The GMS Information Superhighway will provide a broadband
platform connecting the six countries where basic services
including voice, data and Internet access services can be provided,
Han said.
The telecom industry in the GMS region is backward in general,
especially in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, which are still
at the early stages of telecom development. Government statistics
show that in 2003 the percentage of phone subscribers in the four
countries was only 0.24, 0.75, 0.56 and 3.19 respectively.
In November last year, the six GMS nations signed an agreement
to build the Information Superhighway together. China Telecom
organized the first meeting on project implementation in January
2005 and developed the preliminary plan.
(Xinhua News Agency July 4, 2005)