Abstract: The Internet has made an important part of the national information infrastructure of China. Without the Internet, social informationization cannot be popularized to an extent as today. Upon the coming of a new year, we especially invited Mr. Jiang Lintao, a famous communication expert and the chief engineer of China Academy of Telecommunication Res earch of the Ministry of Information Industry, to give us his opinions on the opportunities and challenges brought by the Internet.

According to Mr. Jiang, the appearance of the Internet has brought great impact on telecommunications networks. It has broken the monopoly of the telecom industry in telecom services and promoted the development of technologies. Characterized by continuous innovation and aggressiveness, Internet services guarantee their dominating position in broadband networks, and put the telecom industry in a quite passive position. The telecom industry is still looking for new development direction and breakthroughs in technology so as to regain its leading position.

Mr. Jiang also pointed out that the future of both telecom networks and the Internet should be next generation network, which will be the main body of the future national information infrastructure. The ess ential features of the next generation network should be as follows: it should be secure and trustworthy enough to safeguard users rights, nationals ecurity and socialstability; it should be s calable enough to allow sustainable development; it should be compatible with current main technologies, co- exist with them and allow their graceful evolution; and it should provide a network platform for everybody to innovate.