Connecting Rural Henan Province through the Joint Force of the Government and the Carrier: Achievements and Challenges

摘要

It is not an easy task to provide affordable and useful information services to rural residents. Particularly in China, where the economic gap between the rural and urban areas is extremely significant, most rural residents, most of whom are peasants, cannot afford the “luxury” of broadband connections and lack the necessary training to take advantage of the rich information brought by the Internet. There is hardly any successful market-oriented approach to solving this problem. The telecommunications carriers lack the incentive to invest in high-cost, usually poor, areas. Some sort of government intervention seems to be inevitable. For example, in the U.S., the universal service fund is collected to support the high-cost rural areas. In 2003, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a distance learning project which aimed to bring up-to-date ideological education to cadres and common party members in the rural areas. In Henan province, the local party committee hired China Unicom, which is the dominant broadband service provider, to implement the project. Facing the fact that the penetration of PCs is very low in rural areas, China Unicom adopted IPTV technology. The carrier customizes the set-up box to be able to receive government information and gives the box for free to the rural residents. The party subsidizes the monthly usage charge. The network can also deliver education, entertainment, market and medical information. Originally, the network was designed to offer a kind of public service. With the development of the project, business has found value in this wide network which is capable of extending to virtually every rural household. Some began to advertise their products in this network and others utilize the network to communicate with their end-suppliers, usually peasants. The participation of the business not only brings new revenue to China Unicom, but also helps to keep the monthly charge at a relatively low level. It is interesting that the network, which was originally designed as a tool to enhance ideological education, has gradually evolved into a commercially sustainable one. What can we learn from this case? Is it just another case with the Chinese characteristics? Or can we utilize this model in other countries? The paper will try to answer those questions.