BEIJING - China Unicom, one of the country's major wireless and internet services providers, has said it will help push forward the digitization in southwestern Sichuan province in the next five years.

In a cooperative framework agreement signed between the company and the provincial government, China Unicom has agreed to use its capacities to further expand the construction of WCDMA networks and beef up WIFI/WAPI services in the region.

A statement Friday on the website of the country's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said the company aims to provide more efficient and comprehensive information services to people in Sichuan, which was hit by a devastating earthquake in May 2008.

The company has invested 3.3 billion yuan ($508 million) in building 2,810 wireless telecommunications base stations in the province following the disaster, the statement said, adding this greatly improved the province's telecommunication capacity to a level better than before the disaster struck.

The statement said the company will strive to cover all the active areas with WCDMA in five years and will promote the mobile internet services with 3G technologies.

The company will also deepen the development and application of fiber optic internet. The statement said the agreement will help pave the way for the formation of a digitized city featured by applications of high-speed internet of things.