China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) has announced a new goal for this year's rural area telecommunications project, aiming at increasing the telephone penetration rate in the countryside to 99.5% by the end of this year.

The MII issued on Tuesday a 2007 mission statement that all the administrative villages across the country will be covered by the national telephone grid by the end of 2007, as part of the efforts to wrap up the "Telephones-Reaching-All-Villages Project" initiated in 2004. The mission focuses on further efforts to expand the telephone penetration and to promote the Internet application in the rural areas.

The telecom industry regulator is requiring the country's six main telecom operators to introduce telephones (both fixed-line and mobile) as soon as possible to about 3,500 villages that have neither phone nor Internet access yet to connect the outside world. The MII says that telephones will reach all the remote and under-developed rural areas this year to ensure that 99.5% of the 680,000-plus administrative villages and several thousand natural villages in the country can have a phone by the end of this year.

China has invested 200 billion yuan ($25.6 billion) in extending telephone services to rural areas over the past two years, and has built nearly 8,000 agricultural websites by the end of 2006 to provide practical information on farming skills and produce trade. According to the MII blueprint, "all villages will have telephones, and all townships can get online" by the end of 2010.

The MII says it will try to seek funding and policy support from concerned regional departments in realizing the ambitious goal. The telecom equipment and operation in rural villages will be improved while charges will be lowered to lower levels to "guarantee all the villagers satisfactory phone services at low costs."