That "the rural market is a broad blue sea" has become a consensus view across the whole communications industry. But, for operators, it is very difficult to copy past successful models for rural communications. Due to a general low level of economic development in rural regions, few farmers contribute to the overall telecom consumption. Also, as major operators have freely developed services for years, most farmer households with purchasing power have already become communication product users.

In rural regions, operators face many problems such as unclear positioning, serious overlapping construction and lack of mature development models. Though rural communication benefits the country and the people, one difficult issue that baffles the current development of rural communications is how operators, as listed companies, can balance the "profit" of their corporate operations with the "obligation" of their social responsibility.

Currently, rural communications has a low ARPU value. This further proves that the key to economic returns does not lie in the number of end users but in the ability to achieve the same call volume with a lower cost. Low cost is reflected in: building wide-coverage and low-cost networks, lowering marketing cost, strengthening cooperation with local governments, and trying to lower cost through getting preferential taxation and investment policies from the government, cooperating with the government, introducing "package" services, promoting the maturity of the rural communications market, and entering the stage of network integration and comprehensive services.

Meanwhile, operators can organically link rural communications with urban construction, the strategy to building a new socialist countryside, and actively exploring new development models for rural communications. Regarding the characteristics of the rural market and based on the current situation, operators firstly need to tailor some communications products, and develop flexible and rich service packages. In addition, in relation to the practical information demand in rural regions, operators should provide data services besides their key voice services at present. Data services closely related to farmers' daily production and life should also become an important business growth point for operators.

In addition, operators should join hands with different forces to organize suitable agricultural information sources, and deepen information services that meet rural needs, such as SMS consulting, mobile weather information, mobile price query and e-agriculture. For example, China Mobile's "Nong Xin Tong" platform can help farmers to get the latest agricultural knowledge and market information, winning great favor from farmers. The guidelines for expanding the rural market are to meet farmers' information demands, promote new countryside building, and tap the potentials for revenue increases in the rural market.