In the face of increasingly intense competition, China Telecom data communications activities are being expanded. For more information, see also China Telecommunications market Overview and Major Players. ChinaDDN covers over 2,000 cities and county towns as well as over 2,000 township centres. Despite recent rapid growth, it is still on a small scale and is far from becoming significantly larger. A major drawback to development is the scarcity of credit card usage and lack of online security.
Users are also concerned with product quality, delivery and after-sale services.
49K China - High Speed Networks and Broadband Services Growth areas include fibre optic, xDSL and cable TV networks. China plans to have fibre cable laid to all urban centre households by 2010. China had an estimated 175,000 broadband subscribers at end-2000 as against 880,000 narrowband subscribers. Broadband growth is projected to surpass that of narrowband by 2002 and by 2004 should reach close to 1 million subscribers. Since opening its first official Internet link in 1995, growth has been nothing short of phenomenal in China.