Information Industry Fledging up in Guangzhou

Guangzhou, Shanghai, Dalian and Qingdao, as listed by China Information Promotion Office are going to be the pace-setting cities in China's information industry. "If we make a trunk call from Guangzhou to Beijing or Shanghai in the near future, we needn't have to pay the long-distance call fee, and moreover, we can also use the videophones", said an official of Guangzhou.

This is just a profile of the development in the city's information industry. During the "Ninth Five Year Plan" period, the information infrastructure including telecom, cable TV, computer and other infrastructure projects had fledged, forming primarily a complete system, and optic-fiber network will soon be put into operation.

By the end of last year, the switchboard exchange capacity for local phones reached a total of 2.4445 million sets, with 14,778 IC telephones in operation. Up to now, ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) users have come to 16,000 and Cable TV network has basically covered the whole city. The city has turned out to be one of the three outlet cities in China for both domestic and international calls and the Internet as well.

In the past, say, having a computer at home is a fashion or just for show, now it is for actual use. Many citizens are getting news and information from the Internet and Internet information is now coming to be a thing for the rank and file. Statistics show that there are 51.8 computers in every 100 families in the city with the Internet users reaching 700,000, an increase of 3.3 folds over the same period of last year. An investigation on the Internet conducted in the first half of this year told the highest clicking on the Internet among the cities of the country.

Guangzhou, as one of the earliest cities in developing the information industry, is also a forerunner of the industry. IT industry has become a new spotlight in the city. As reported the added value of IT industry has reached 15.83 billion yuan, accounting for 7.7% of its GDP. The three software bases located in the city have rendered Guangzhou a software base next only to Zhongguancun, home of China's high-tech park in Beijing.



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