China Telecom, one of the country's dominant telecom operators,
said it has launched network reconstruction projects in snow-hit
areas. Services will be fully restored by the end of next
month.
Heavy snow and icy rain since Jan. 10 have hampered telecom
services in the country's east, central and southern regions.
According to China Telecom, services in most of the disaster-hit
provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have been fully
resumed. This left only a handful of networks in Guizhou, Hunan,
Jiangxi, Fujian and Sichuan still in need of repair.
To date, the company has dispatched 346,658 employees and
127,519 vehicles to repair the damaged base stations.
By Monday, 129,920 of the stations, about 95.07 percent of the
total, and 82,636 transmission towers had been repaired, More than
11 million subscribers, about 88.16 percent of the affected telecom
users, could now make calls again.
China Telecom also said it would replace copper cables with
optical cables in the reconstruction, and update equipment to
accelerate the evolution of its rural telecom network.
Approximately 11.91 million telecom users, or 60 percent of the
total subscribers, suffered a suspension in phone links because of
the worst snow in China in 50 years.
(Xinhua News Agency February 19, 2008)