The information industry vice minister told China Telecom
Group’s 2006 Work Plan Conference in Beijing on December 19
that, by the end of 2005, it is expected that the number of
mainland telephone subscribers will reach 746 million; 393 million
using mobiles and 353 million fixed lines.
Xi Guohua said more new Chinese subscribers choose
mobiles instead of fixed lines; at the end of 2004 the number of
mainland mobile subscribers was 335 million, and this year the
average monthly number of new mobile subscribers was nearly five
million.
The number of mainland internet users exceeded 100
million, the second largest in the
world. More than 50 percent use broadband and 670,000 websites are
registered with the ministry.
Every website in China
that has an independent domain name and web space must be
registered, and the ministry has the right to shut down any that
are not.
From January to October 2005, 246.7 billion SMS
messages were sent in China, a 40 percent increase year-on-year, in
which time the SMS market earned nearly 25 billion yuan.
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), WAP and color
ring back tone (CRBT) are also developing rapidly, and IPTV, blogs,
e-commerce and search engines feature more prominently in people’s
daily lives.
Insiders at the conference quoted by Xinhua News
Agency the same day said they believed more and more value-added
telecom services will emerge in China, especially if 3G becomes
available.
(China.org.cn by Wang Sining, December 24,
2005)