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China has announced plans to spend $182 billion over the next 30 months to modernize the nation's network infrastructure:
The State Council, China's chief administrative authority, said the government will invest at least $69.3bn in network construction this year, which in turn will be supplemented with $112.8bn in expenditure before the end of 2017, all in order to accelerate the construction of fiber optic networks and 4G networks.
The state investment follows Li Keqiang, the State Council Premier, announcing China's "Internet Plus" policy, which is intended to see the nation focus on domestic technology adoption in order to boost domestic growth while also giving Chinese technology firms a chance do do better overseas.
Complaining about China's internet speeds previously, Keqiang undershot the Network Readiness Index [which ranks China 62nd], instead seemingly favouring Akamai's State of the Internet: Q4 2014 report [Subscription required], stating that "China has more cellphone users than any other country, but its net service speed ranks below 80th in the world due to underdeveloped information infrastructure".
The State Council has said: "By the end of 2017, all households in locations above prefecture level will have access to 100 Mbps fiber optic networks, over 80 per cent of villages will be covered by fiber optic networks, all cities and villages will be covered by 4G networks, and broadband speeds in municipalities and provincial capitals will reach 30 Mbps."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @02:59AM
That is what central control is good for. If all you care about is getting stuff done then totalitarianism is king. With democracy and the distributed economics of capitalism most of the resources are bound up fighting on opposing sides. In China there is only one true side and whatever they say goes.
Of course just like every other scenario where investments are all put in one direction it is just as likely to go horribly wrong as good. Still, either way something will happen.