Lao Cable TV was established in 2002 as a joint venture between the Department of Mass Media of the Ministry of Information and Culture and Chinese cable TV company Yang Ching Sung Tu Electrical Co Ltd, with shares held 85 per cent by the Chinese side and 15 per cent by the Ministry. The first cable television company established in Laos, Lao Cable TV has already expanded its services to cover 197 villages within the six districts of Vientiane Prefecture. Some 10,000 households are already connected to the network, and assuming that there are on average four in each household this means that there are now some 40,000 Lao Canle TV viewers. Lao Cable TV offers a bouquet of 30 different foreign television channels, including BBC, CNN, CNBC, Worldnet, ABC Asia Pacific, TV5 (France), DW (Germany), RAI (Italy), MTV, Star Sports, plus Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Korean and other channels. At the present time the system is being upgraded and developed through the use of fibre optic cable, and in future it is planned to offer Internet and IP services via cable TV.