The last less than twenty years saw rapid development of telephone service in China. Home phones, which used to be thought of as luxury, have become a common thing in more and more average homes.

¡¡¡¡From the graph, we know that in 1978, the city only possessed about 50,000 home phones because of the low living standard of people. Since then, however, owing to the reform and open-door policy, people become wealthy enough to afford home phones. The installation of home phones went a big step forward especially over the last five years. Compared with home phones in 1991, the number doubled in 1997, eight times as many as that in 1978.