Chongqing's requirements on network communication have been increasingly accompanied with the rapid development of the internet industry. The opening ceremony of Chongqing's national internet backbone direct connection point was held at the Administrative Committee of Liang Jiang New Area on August 20.

In addition to the benefits to citizens' internet surfing experience, it's a precious development opportunity for enterprises in Chongqing and even the entire central and western regions. Cloud computing, big data and other information industries will be vigorously promoted as well.

"Chongqing's internet had a slow development over the past two decades," According to Li Binhong, of the Expert Database of China Electronic Commerce Association and General manager of Chongqing Zhijia Information Science and Technology, Chongqing's internet formally started in 1995, but it was uncompetitive from the perspective of hardware due to its long-standing position as a third tier communication network, and the flow used to be transmitted from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Li Binhong said that "there are around 60,000 internet enterprises in Chongqing, and 92 percent of them have their servers placed in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong. The maintenance cost is high, and the hosting fee for 10 servers is RMB 100,000 yuan per year. Enterprises have to go there to deal with server failure, which is extremely inconvenient."

An official of Kingdee said it costs over one million yuan to purchase a server, and some large scale enterprises used to place servers at China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom respectively to meet the needs of users of different operators, and "it would cost you a fortune."

According to an official of the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, local enterprises in Chongqing can save a lot of money, "instead of placing servers at the three operators, enterprises can place their servers at one place now, and don't need to worry about slow access speed and data distortion across different operators."

As a matter of fact, the opening of Chongqing national internet backbone brings far more benefits than just "saving server expenses". It's learned from Chongqing Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology that the approval for opening a national internet backbone direct connection point allows Chongqing to become a tier one node of the national communication network architecture, and facilitate the comprehensive upgrading of communication network infrastructures across the city. Inter-operator and inter-province access doesn't need to be transmitted from other cities, and the internet access speed and quality in our city will be increased significantly. It will also improve the connectivity of the communication network backbone in central and western regions, and optimize the internet layout of the entire central and western regions.

The opening of a national internet backbone direct connection point will promote the big channel, integrated customs clearance, large platform and open environment construction along with economic transformation and upgrading of Chongqing, and greatly facilitate Chongqing's cross-border E-commerce, demonstration and trade of bonded goods, construction and operation of Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe Railway Trading Port, internet, cloud computing and big data industry as well as cross-border settlement and investment facilitation. It will also speed up industrial agglomeration, drive information consumption, and promote the prosperity of the internet economy.

The opening of a backbone direct connection point will benefit development of the internet in central and western regions, narrow the huge digital gap between different areas, and facilitate local economic transformation and upgrading. According to the Institute of Telecommunications under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in addition to factors like economic development standards (such as GDP) and average rate for broadband access, whether an area is in possession of an internet backbone direct connection point and its distance to direct connection point has great impact on its internet development.

To be specific, the number of internet enterprise clusters will be greater, the industry scale will be larger and information technology standards will be comparatively higher if an area is closer to a direct connection point. According to an analysis of insiders, the opening of the internet backbone direct connection point in Chongqing will help central and western regions to attract and gather emerging industries, promote a coordinated development among different areas, and benefit the building of a faster and more convenient information channel across the city, the country and even the world.

Chongqing has become one of the seven new national internet backbone direct connection points in October last year. When talking about the reasons to choose Chongqing, Shang Bing, Vice-Minister of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that as an important city in the central and western region, Chongqing boasts obvious advantages in both development conditions and prospects.

According to insiders, on the one hand, as the only municipality directly under the central government and as part of the economic center of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, Chongqing's water, land and air transportation have been developing rapidly. On the other hand, Chongqing has been thoroughly implementing its Cloud Computing Plan, and its requirements on communication network capacity have been increasing accompanied by the successive launching of internet, cloud computing and big data projects. The development of entire emerging industries and economy will be restrained if it stays at the third tier of a communication network architecture.

Edited by Brian Salter, Huang Pei