All townships in southwest China's Guizhou province have had access to telephone just a few days after entering the year 2000. Last year, the government invested a total of 62.5 million yuan in installing telephone lines in 67 remote and mountainous townships. By the end of 1999, all the 1,460 townships in the province had installed telephone lines.

According to local telecommunications officials, there are to date 137,000 telephones in rural areas of the province. Telephone optical fiber cables run some 9,376 kilometers.