It was one day in late August when Yu Haixia's family had its first fixed-line telephone installed. Yu Haixia and her husband are farmers in Xingye village, Wuchang city, in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province. As soon as it was installed, she and her son excitedly used the newly installed phone to tell the good news to their relatives faraway.
In recent years, like the rest of the country, Heilongjiang province has seen a rapid increase in the number of telephone and Internet users. This has brought convenience not only to the everyday lives of local people, but also to their work. In the past, owning a telephone was a luxury for ordinary Chinese. Now it has become a popular commodity. Statistics show that 30 percent of Chinese households own fixed-line telephones. In Heilongjiang province alone, there are 6.1 million fixed-line telephone users. More than 55 percent of the households in Heilongjiang have telephones.
96180 is the number of a hotline run by the Heilongjiang Telecoms Company under China Netcom. It provides 24-hour services ranging from receiving customers' complaints, providing consultations, processing suggestions and arranging maintenance. The hotline is meant to improve the quality of telecom service. The 96180 hotline is managed under a responsibility system at three levels, namely the provincial, the prefectural, and the county levels. It offers a one hundred percent guaranteed answer to customers' complaints, and any request by customers receives instant feedback from the hotline operator, thus establishing a strong rapport between telephone operators and users. Deputy General Manager of Heilongjiang Telecom Company under China Netcom, Yu Xijian said, "It was not easy for us to achieve such a good level of service using this hotline system. The first thing was to change the ideas and mentality of all our employees. Then we transformed the internal mechanisms as well as each and every unit of our production within our enterprise. All these are to set up a customer-oriented, not enterprise-focused, concept in production and service. "
Apart from improving service level, the Heilongjiang Telecom Company is stepping up measures to tap new areas of business by providing multi-faceted, intelligent, audio, visual and graphic net services to customers. The Heilongjiang Information Port is a public information platform. Its online service covers more than 1,000 government departments, over 70 industries, and more than 40 thousand enterprises. Against the background of the fast developing information industry and commercialization of the telecom industry, operators are faced with the challenge and the necessity of expanding their businesses into under-developed but potentially lucrative areas. General manager of Wuchang Telecoms Company under Heilongjiang Telecom Company, Pan Zhiyuan said, "In remote rural area, installing one fixed-line telephone costs about 5,000 yuan, or 600 US dollars. It will take ten years for a company to recoup the investment. It is a heavy burden for the enterprise, and seriously affects its profits. "
Background:
At the end of July 2002, the total number of phone users in China was 380 million. Of these, 200 million are fixed-line telephones, 180 million are mobile phones.
On average, one hundred persons own about 30 phones.
For city dwellers, one hundred urban residents have 23 fixed-line telephones and 14 mobile phones.
(Sept.16,2002)
Editor: Wang Yin
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