GUIYANG, Dec. 16 -- China Mobile and China Unicom announced on Monday the beginning of construction on two cloud computing parks with investment totaling 7 billion yuan (1.15 billion U.S. dollars) in southwest China's Guizhou Province.

The two cloud computing parks will be located in Gui'an new area of Guizhou Province, where China Telecom already began construction of a similar park in October.

China Unicom, one of China's basic telecom operators, plans to invest 5 billion yuan in the park, which will cover 500 mu (about 33.3 hectares) of land.

China Mobile, China's largest telecom operator, plans to build a cloud computing park covering an area of 275 mu with 2 billion yuan in investment.

The Gui'an new area includes land in Guiyang, the provincial capital, and the neighboring city of Anshun. It is one of five key new areas marked off in the country's 12th five-year plan for 2011-2015 to promote development in western regions.

Cloud computing generally refers to services, including software and storage, accessed by users through the Internet.