Chinanews, Beijing, June 6 - According to Zhao Houlin, vice¹ general secretary of the International Telecommunication² Union (ITU), China ranks the second in the number of broadband subscribers, next only to the US.

Zhao said this on June 5 in Beijing, at the opening ceremony of the Asian Conference of 2007 World Broadband Forum³, hosted by China Netcom.

"By the end of 2005, about 74% of broadband subscribers in the world lived in developed countries, 17.5% lived in China, and the rest in other developing countries. It was really fast for the popularization of broadband access in China," said Zhao.

The latest statistics from ITU shows that in 2005, 17% of residents in developed countries had access to broadband connections, while the figure in 2001 was only 4%. The figure in developing countries increased from 0 to 3%. Some of the least developed countries still have no access to broadband even now.

However, China's speed in the development of broadband is much faster than other developing countries, with more than 144 million Internet users, of whom 97 million are broadband subscribers.

Besides, China is very active in contributing to the making of the standard of several broadband applications, like IPTV, P2P and digital home gateway⁴. The country has also invested a great deal on the development of the next-generation Internet, with the completion of the biggest experimental IPv6 network.