Rural villages in Shanghai will be connected to the city's broadband Internet network within two years, Shanghai Telecom said yesterday.

The network will cover all the more than 1,000 villages in the city compared with 30 percent now, according to an agreement signed between Shanghai Telecom and the Shanghai Agricultural Commission. Shanghai Telecom will also invest one million yuan (US$125,000) to train 1,000 information technology workers in villages, the agreement said.

The plan is one of the city's efforts to narrow the digital gap between downtown and suburban areas.

"We will use all kinds of resources, from investment, people and services, to support the project to narrow the gap," said Zhang Weihua, Shanghai Telecom's chairman.

The network will give villages access to information including weather forecasts, agriculture material prices and pest-control methods, according to the agricultural commission.

"The Internet will help me boost revenue by 20 percent as I can start online trade," said a honey maker surnamed Gu.

Shanghai Telecom did not say how much its broadband packages would cost villagers. "It is a natural move for Shanghai Telecom as last year was a 'rural area expansion' year for carriers," said Yi Mingyu, an analyst at Beijing-based CCID Consulting Co.

Telecom carriers, including China Telecom and China Mobile, are expanding business in rural areas as cities are close to saturation point, Yi said.

Shanghai's mobile phone penetration rate reached 90.5 percent at the end of last year, according to the Shanghai Communications Administration. By the end of September, China's telecommunications carriers had established new Internet networks in 5,901 rural towns, 98 percent of the total nationwide, said the Ministry of Information Industry.

(Shanghai Daily February 8, 2007)