China has seen rapid development in terms of wireless local area networks in recent years but the country's WLAN usage is still lagging behind many developed countries, analysts said.
WLAN, which is usually referred to as Wi-Fi, allows electronic devices to exchange data wirelessly over a computer network. Because of the explosive growth of mobile data traffic, Chinese telecom operators, as well as many other enterprises, have stepped up the pace of deploying more wireless network access points across the country since 2010.
China Mobile Ltd, the world's biggest mobile carrier by subscriber numbers, aims to add 1.4 million Wi-Fi access points in China this year to reach a total access point number of 3.78 million.
Li Yue, chief executive officer of China Mobile, previously said Wi-Fi is a highly efficient network solution with the lowest deployment cost. He added China Mobile will create more than 6 million Wi-Fi access points in the future.
China Telecom Corp, the nation's smallest mobile operator, also revealed that it planned to have about 900,000 wireless network access points by the end of this year.