Beijing: China plans to cover more than 95 per cent of its villages by broadband service this year.

Broadband connection has already reached 92 per cent of the villages in China, which has about 122 million broadband users to put the country in the top rung in the world.

Telephone service would be expanded further in rural areas, with some 99.5 per cent of the country's villages already having access to telephones, the Ministry of Information Industry was quoted as saying by official Xinhua news agency.

Last year, China saw addition of 73 million people to its total netizen population, 40 per cent of them living in areas. The total number of rural internet users is now estimated at 52.62 million as at the end of last year, a 127.7 per cent jump year-on-year.

China had 210 million internet users at the end of 2007 and its online population is on course to become the world's largest at the beginning of this year. 

Source : PTI