Beijing Says Total 20 Mbps Broadband Coverage Coming By Year’s End

Yesterday, Beijing authorities (including the committee that manages telecommunications and the committee that manages housing) held a meeting and said that by the end of this year, Beijing will have 20 Mbps broadband coverage everywhere, a project that will require adding fiber-optic infrastructure to around one million new households. That’s a tall order, and as the city’s vice-secretary Dai Wei put it, “2012 is already half over, so [telecoms and the government] must seize the moment.”

The housing committee also stated publicly that housing community managers cannot get in the way of this. In the past, one major obstacle to the rollout of faster internet is that some of these managers have accepted kickbacks from one telecom company in return for keeping competitors out, eliminating competition and ensuring slower service at higher costs. This, Housing and City Construction Committee property management department head Guo Yanli says, can no longer happen.

As with most government pronouncements about broadband speeds, though, it’s not clear exactly how any of this is going to be enforced. It’s also not clear what these 20 Mbps connections will cost once they are available to everyone, as prices can vary by provider and by location. And, of course, there’s the eternal complaint that a 20 Mbps connection probably doesn’t mean 20 Mbps speeds; I’ve been using my 4 Mbps connection for a year now and I barely get up to 3 Mbps on a good day (most days it’s more like 1 Mbps). Still, having a 20 Mbps connection that only goes 15 Mbps would still be a big improvement, and if on the way to accomplishing that, the government can stamp out local housing community ISP monopolies, that would be great. Here’s hoping it all works out, somehow.

[Beijing News via Sina Tech, image via Shutterstock]