WiFi to cover all Shanghai by 2013 end

Shanghai will provide WiFi Internet access in all public places by the end of next year, authorities in the East China metropolis said on Wednesday.

The move is part of plans to build an "intelligent city".

A total of 130,000 WiFi hot spots will be developed in 2013 and all the public areas will be connected to the wireless network, Shanghai Radio Administration Bureau said.

The bureau is encouraging the three major telecom operators?- China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom?- to jointly build and share WiFi infrastructures and base stations and provide Internet services to their respective users.

In this way, residents will find a public signal instead of separate ones from the operators when surfing on the Internet in the streets, which will benefit the users by providing a more stable Internal signal and a faster connection speed.

Some other cities, including Qingdao, Wuhan, Jinan and Guangzhou, have provided residents with free wireless Internet access in most of their public places.

Yantian, a district in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, has built a wireless communication network in its area.