In response to the "Protecting Children in Cyberspace" theme adopted by the International Telecommunication Union for this year's World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, Shanghai Telecom has launched an initiative to create a "green" online environment for teenagers.

Shanghai Telecom will promote the green Internet service in 15 of its outlets across Shanghai, providing related knowledge and technology consulting service to consumers. Shanghai Telecom's green Internet service is said to be able to help efficiently manage household networks to realize an automatic shutdown of network access and a screening of bad information to protect teenagers from accessing to "unhealthy" online content such as pornography. By early this year, there were 1.5 billion Internet users around the world, and among them about 400 million were broadband users. While the Internet is rapidly growing, it is said to have brought more and more harm to the children.

Shanghai Telecom's initiative is focused on protecting children from harmful content online and other technology sectors have recently made progress in similar areas. During the First International Digital Creative Industry Summit held in Wuhan late last year, representatives from the Chinese online game industry called on relevant government departments to introduce a classification system into China's game industry to promote the healthy development of the industry. And early in 2004, the China Youth Internet Association set up the "Recommended Standard for Green Games", in which it set different grades for online games.