Mobile technology lifts remote region(2)

According to China Mobile, almost all the primary and middle schools in Karamay are connected to the Wireless City platform. More than 30,000 students, or 90 percent of the total, make use of the services.

When people are in need of certain out-of-stock medicines, they can turn to the Wireless City website and tap in the medicine name. They can soon find out which pharmacy is still selling the item and discover its exact location.

Wang said he and his colleagues hope one day the Wireless City portal will become an integral part of Karamay people's lives. "Every morning, when Karamay people get up, the first website he or she will open is the portal, checking things such as weather and transportation. The last web page he or she closes at night will be the portal as well," Wang said.

Although Karamay is a small city with a population of 400,000, the mobile phone penetration rate is about 170 percent, much higher than the nation's average of 70 percent, said Li Wei, general manager of China Mobile's Karamay branch.

"The figure indicates that every Karamay resident owns 1.7 mobile phones. We usually joke that the only people who don't have mobile phones here are newborn babies," Li said. The high usage rate of mobile phones in Karamay is evidence of the city's evolution into a wireless city. Meanwhile, the saturated market also offers impetus for telecom operators to launch in-depth services instead of merely competing for new customers, he added.

Since China Mobile started the Wireless City project in Xinjiang one year ago, 16 cities, including Urumqi, Karamay, Kashi and Altay, have launched similar city-level Wireless City online portals. The cumulative mobile application number has surpassed 700, with an active user base of 200,000 every day.

Bai Zhigang, general manager of China Mobile's Xinjiang subsidiary, said the company had earmarked 2.46 billion yuan this year to continue pushing forward the Wireless City project in the region. As a nationwide program, China Mobile aims to have 50 million users for the Wireless City project by the end of this year, up from 17 million in April.

The Internet of things

Xinjiang is China's largest cotton production base. It has about 24.7 million mu (about 1.6 million hectares) of cotton fields and is expected to produce 3.2 million tons of cotton this year, an estimated increase of 3.6 percent from last year, according to statistics from Xinjiang's development and reform commission. The production is about half of the total national cotton output.

Enough sunshine and appropriate irrigation are the two most important elements for a good cotton harvest. Sunshine is a natural blessing for Xinjiang people. However, the region faces severe water shortage problems, which requires an advanced irrigation system with a higher water utilization ratio.