Shaanxi Mobile Company: Making Rural Life Better
Date: 2011-05-17 02:53:03 Source: Xi'an Daily Author:
Facing the vast new countryside, for a long time, Shaanxi Mobile Company has been committed to eliminating the urban-rural "digital divide", breaking through with the "village-to-village" project, and carrying out the "Happy New Countryside" activity. Actively constructing rural communication networks, rural information networks, and marketing service networks, the "three networks" benefit "agriculture, rural areas, and farmers", assisting in building a new countryside. Using mobile communication to change rural life, Shaanxi Mobile Company provides farmers with "accessible, affordable, and good quality" mobile communication and information services, making it a promoter of economic development and social progress in rural areas.
Communication Networks Enable Every Village to Have Phone Access
Shaanxi Mobile Company continuously expands network coverage in the rural areas of Shaanxi, ensuring smooth network operation, aiming to eliminate mobile communication barriers, laying a solid foundation and providing reliable assurance for promoting the informatization process in rural areas and building a bridge for farmers to escape poverty and become wealthy. Since 2004, Shaanxi Mobile Company has actively participated in the national "village-to-village telephone access project" aimed at solving the problem of communication coverage in rural areas. By the end of 2010, it had cumulatively opened mobile phone access for more than 2700 remote villages, invested a cumulative total of 4 billion yuan, achieved effective network coverage in 94% of administrative villages across the province, and reached 100% coverage in towns.
In Hanzhong alone, Shaanxi Mobile Company has cumulatively invested over 300 million yuan, constructed more than 400 base stations, and built over 5000 kilometers of transmission lines, ending the history of no communication in bordering, distant, and poor administrative villages in 11 counties and districts of Hanzhong, achieving a 100% communication coverage rate in 226 towns and 2901 administrative villages, and reaching a mobile population coverage rate of over 92% in the entire city.
Under the feet of the rural network builders of China Mobile, mountains turn into mud pellets, and water rises into fine waves. Among the more than 400 base stations constructed in the "village-to-village project" in Hanzhong, most are located in remote mountainous areas with deep gorges and thorny paths blocking the way. For the majority of these base stations, construction required China Mobile employees to climb mountains for hours, carrying heavy equipment and materials on their shoulders, and in rocky places, they even had to blast rocks to open up the mountains. On the road to village connectivity, mobile workers remain unrepentant because the mobile signal continues to spread; on the road to village connectivity, mobile workers feel gratified because the backward appearance of the countryside is gradually improving.
In Yulin, Shaanxi Mobile Company is the main force in the "village-to-village telephone" project. By April 2011, it had placed village connectivity phones in more than 200 towns across the city, cumulatively built and put into use nearly 1400 rural base stations, accounting for nearly 70% of the total number of base stations in the city, including papermaking equipment and accessories.
Information Networks Make Farmers Richer More Easily
Shaanxi Mobile Company leverages the characteristics of mobile communication technology to assist in transforming "traditional agriculture" into "modern agriculture" through informatization. Implementing the rural information entering villages and households project, it has established a complete modern rural information service system, utilizing modern information technology and equipment to timely collect and release rural information, realizing the informatization of agricultural and rural social management, and promoting agricultural modernization.
"Nongxin Tong" relies on the powerful network services of mobile, based on mobile terminals such as mobile phones and rural information machines, using methods such as SMS, voice, WAP, etc., to build a five-level information platform at the provincial, municipal, county, town, and village levels, ensuring smooth agricultural affairs, facilitating the understanding of livelihood information, helping farmers increase income, allowing a large number of customers to enjoy comprehensive rural information services at the internet level more promptly, effectively, and affordably, effectively solving the "last mile" problem of rural informatization.
By the end of 2010, Shaanxi Mobile Company had cumulatively deployed tens of thousands of rural information machines across the province, cumulatively transmitting billions of pieces of various agricultural science and technology, market conditions, and other information. The rural information network has become an important and effective window for farmers to obtain agricultural information, providing strong informatization support for farmers to develop production, increase income, and improve living standards.
To fully achieve the implementation of rural information "entering villages and households," Shaanxi Mobile Company has launched dedicated mobile phones and dedicated "Nongxin Tong" SIM cards for the rural market, enabling one-touch browsing, customization, and inquiry of "Nongxin Tong" information. At the same time, the "Shenzhou Xing" New Home Card offers low terminal prices and fees, lowering the threshold for farmers to use "Nongxin Tong."
In Shengxian Village, Chenggu County, Hanzhong City, orange grower He Min spoke deeply about the information station. He said, "Before, selling oranges required advertising ourselves. After the information station was built in the village, I posted sales information on the website and left my contact details. After the information was released, users quickly contacted me to buy." Afterwards, whenever he had time, He Min would go to the information station to look up relevant materials and understand market trends. Through the Internet, he mastered new techniques for orange cultivation, market demand standards, and variety demands, planting fruits according to market demand and standards, which made his oranges sell well and at high prices. He praised the benefits of the village information station to everyone he met.
Li Xiaobo from Chenjiawan Village, Fuchuan Town, Mian County, is the village's information officer. The information station is set up in his small grocery store, and he is also one of the earliest beneficiaries of the information station. "The pesticides in rural towns are messy. I bought two bottles of Sophora Alkaloid insecticide from the street and tried to check online after returning home to see if there were any problems. It turned out that this pesticide did not have a registration number and had quality issues. After the villagers knew, none of them bought this pesticide anymore. Later, before buying pesticides, the villagers would always check at the information station to avoid buying fake medicine."
Weinan has nearly 600,000 "Nongxin Tong" customers, covering most rural areas. Since May 2006, more than 300,000 farmers have benefited through "Nongxin Tong." To date, 735 information stations have been included in the electronic management platform, with the information center covering 100% of all agricultural bureaus in Weinan City. Information stations cover 100% of towns and key agricultural industrial parks, achieving "one station per town" and an administrative village coverage rate of over 85%.
Weinan Branch also cooperates with the Weinan Agricultural Bureau to implement the "Rural Informatization 113 Project" across the city, providing key support to 100 rural professional cooperatives, 100 leading agricultural enterprises, and 300 demonstration villages of "one village, one product."
Marketing Networks Make Rural Communication Life Better
In 2010, to better serve rural customers, Shaanxi Mobile Company collaborated with multiple parties to vigorously promote the transformation of the "city-county" two-level marketing system into a "city-county-town" three-level marketing system. Simultaneously, it actively promoted network service channels such as "air selection of numbers" and "air recharge," effectively improving the difficulties rural area customers face in accessing the network and paying bills.
Meanwhile, Shaanxi Mobile Company, considering the consumption characteristics of rural customers, provided farmers with "Shenzhou Xing" Homeland Card tariff products based on regional discounts and "Huainong Network" rural group customer products, offering tariff discounts to rural customers.
For occasions like Spring Festival, returning home, spring plowing, etc., combined with G3 wireless landlines, Shaanxi Mobile Company offered integrated products like "Happy Family" and more cost-effective tariffs to farmers. Farmers could also receive agricultural supplies and gifts by prepaying for phone credits.
From technical training to science, culture, and health outreach programs, China Mobile brought joy, love, and benefits to the farmers.
This year, in several villages mainly centered around Sanwan Village in Zhongnan Town, Zhouzhi County, Xi'an City, the total area of celery cultivation was approximately 6,000 mu (about 1,000 acres), with an estimated vegetable yield of 20,000 tons. However, after the celery matured, very few buyers came to purchase it, causing the price to drop from four or five mao per jin in previous years to just five fen this year, with still few buyers. Villagers stated that, calculated at a cost of 2,500 yuan per mu, each mu of celery would result in a minimum net loss of six or seven hundred yuan. Watching the piles of celery stacked like small mountains, the farmers were anxiously worried. Upon learning about this situation, Shaanxi Mobile Company quickly formulated an emergency response plan. Relying on its powerful communication network and the extensive customer base of "Nongxin Tong," it conducted celery supply and demand information matching between farmers, agricultural brokers, and agricultural organizations through SMS and MMS information channels. At the same time, it widely released the celery sales information of Zhouzhi through the "Agriculture and Commerce Network" website of the Xi'an Municipal Commerce Bureau and the "New Rural Commerce Network" of the Ministry of Commerce, striving to expand information channels. After a week of effort, information matching was carried out with over 3 million farmers, agricultural brokers, and agricultural organizations across the province. Nearly 10,000 tons of celery were sold through the "Nongxin Tong" business, accounting for 50% of the 20,000 tons of unsold celery in Zhouzhi, and the sales price increased by a factor of two, greatly solving the problem of unsold celery in Zhouzhi. Newly harvested celery could also be smoothly sold.
The agriculture-commerce matching service platform of Weinan Branch has cumulatively collected information from over 100 agricultural enterprises, supermarkets, and farmers' markets, organically integrating both supply and demand sides, connecting the entire supply chain, and accelerating the circulation of agricultural products. To date, over 3,000 pieces of agriculture-commerce matching information have been published, resulting in more than 1,000 successful transactions and achieving transactions worth over 50 million yuan, involving more than 30 categories of agricultural products such as melons, vegetables, livestock, and eggs. Publishing information via the online platform has resulted in a success rate of 68.6% in promoting agricultural product sales, effectively solving the problem of difficult agricultural product sales.
In March 2011, Xi'an Mobile signed an agreement with the Xi'an Agricultural Machinery Supervision and Promotion General Station to jointly launch the Xi'an Agricultural Machinery Connect and cross-regional operation remote service system. Over 36,000 agricultural machinery operators and related groups in Xi'an will be connected to Agricultural Machinery Connect, and a large agricultural machinery information network consisting of more than 70,000 people from agricultural machinery departments, agricultural machinery organizations, and agricultural machinery households across the city will be built according to plan. Agricultural Machinery Connect uses mobile phones as carriers, combining machine positioning, 400 one-key call services, regional voice preferential packages, and other group services of China Mobile, providing fast, accurate, and professional agricultural machinery information and navigation services in the form of SMS, MMS, and voice, with rich and practical content. During the busy farming season, Agricultural Machinery Connect will provide various operation information to agricultural machinery operators 24 hours a day while handling complaints about agricultural machinery operations and agricultural machinery product quality.
Shaanxi Mobile Company is taking concrete actions to transform the results of "mobile informatization" into means and capabilities for farmers to develop production, increase income, and improve their lives, striving to make rural life better.