Shandong upgrades telecoms

Shandong province will spend 8.5 billion yuan this year to increase the number of telephone lines available, Xinhua said. By year's end the province plans to have eight million programme-controlled switchboard lines, 57 million customers and 2.6 million pager users. Last year, Shandong's telephone switching capacity was 6.34 million lines. To increase transmission speed the province will build an synchronous digital hierarchy transmission system and expand its global service for mobile communications network. Shandong's multimedia and internet networks will be expanded and a network of automatic bank teller machines will be opened this year.