China Daily reports that a new policy from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will mandate that all new residences have a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connection where such broadband access networks are available. The policy, which goes into effect April 1 of this year, also calls for operators to provide equal subscriber access to competitive service providers.

The China Daily story cites another report from Economic Information Daily that the Chinese government hopes to have 40 million families connected to fiber-optic networks by 2015.

Several carriers in the country have embarked on ambitious FTTH expansion projects (see, for example, "Alcatel-Lucent to expand broadband FTTH network for China Telecom"). The Economic Information Daily story pointed to China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd., as an example. That carrier, the nation's second largest telecom by subscriber count, added 10 million families to its FTTH roster in 2012, the paper reported.

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