In most of the U.S., you can’t get a fiber optic connection even if you’re willing to pay top dollar. In China, it’s now a requirement that any and all newly built residences come stocked with fiber optic access. I repeat: if a fiber optic telecom network is available, any home built near it must link up.
It’s the result of a new directive from the not-at-all-Orwellian-sounding Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. China Daily reports:
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The standards will take effect from April 1, 2013, and will also require residences to offer equal connections to services from various telecom companies allowing customers to choose which service they want.
Analysts pointed out that the new standards are aimed at growing domestic fiber broadband networks, or “Fiber To The Home” services, providing potential business for the telecom industry worth thousands of billions yuan. Economic Information Daily reported that the government hopes to have 40 million families connected to fiber networks by 2015.
Forty million homes with fiber optic connections in two years; a pretty lofty goal. Ironic, of course, that those forty million people will only be able to access the uncensored sliver of the web that the state gives them access too—blinding surfing speeds, the better to access your state-run news and government propaganda.
Still, the total number of people with fiber optic cables in the U.S. is closer to forty, period. With this move, China may be looking to increase its citizenry’s web-literacy and eventually stimulate growth in IT industries from the ground up. It will be expensive, sure—last mile problems are behind fiber optics’ expansion stateside— but the end benefit, an uber web-educated population, will pay off handsomely in the future. You know, the one where we spend something like 97% of our lives online.
