This Day, That Year: March 6

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

In March 1994, the first nationwide videoconferencing network was completed, which enabled the then Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications to hold videoconference calls with local telecom authorities across the country.

An item on March 6, 1994, in China Daily showed a technician making a video call at a telecommunications exhibition in Beijing.

After 25 years of technical development, there are plenty of videoconferencing systems and solutions in the market.

By using videoconferencing services, businesses and users across the world can easily start or join a video meeting face-to-face anytime, anywhere, on their desktop or mobile devices like laptops, smartphones or iPads.

Easy access to the internet and the proliferation of mobile devices have changed the way we communicate.

The rapid growth of social networking platforms has further allowed people to maintain closer ties with friends, family and even work partners via text, audio or video.

Besides face-to-face communication, people in the workplace now depend on conference calls, emails and social networking platforms for job assignments and collaboration.

As of last year, the country's most popular instant-messaging app, WeChat, had 1 billion users worldwide, Tencent Holdings, the operator of the service, said.

Despite the convenience of mobile technology, some people think there's a risk of social isolation as there are fewer person-to-person contacts.

Last year, netizens in the country spent a weekly average of about 27 hours on the internet, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.