The city of Guiyang, Guizhou province has signed a major cooperation and information infrastructural agreement with China Telecom, one of China's largest telecommunication enterprises, on Oct 13, whereby the company's Guizhou branch will put 3-billion yuan ($469 million) into optical network construction, cloud computing, and big data development within three years.
By the end of 2017, cities and towns in the province are expected to have full 100-megabyte broadband coverage and a fourth generation network in rural and urban areas and, at the same time, the two will cooperate in a Guiyang cloud computing platform, a municipal data sharing platform, and a Guizhou Internet exchange center.
In commenting on the agreement, the provincial governor, Chen Min'er, said, "Information infrastructure is as much important to us as transportation and hydraulic engineering."
And the mayor of Guiyang, Liu Wenxin, called this an unprecedented effort that will allow the city to close information infrastructure gap between it and Beijing and Shanghai, and will lay a solid foundation for big data,
At the same time, Shangguan Yafei, GM of the China Telecom branch, said it was certainly a grand achievement and that the boom in big data in the city will get a lot of attention and that the company will do a good job on infrastructure and information services to promote big data development and help turn the city into China's "Data Valley".
