China's telecommunication industry revenue grew 4 percent annually in 2009, thanks to a rise in the number of new mobile phone subscribers and also on the debut of 3G technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said Wednesday.

The national telecom revenue totaled 842.43 billion yuan (US$123.8 billion) and mobile phone users contributed 70 percent of the total revenue, according to MIIT.

In Shanghai, the telecom industry generated a revenue of 50.5 billion yuan in 2009, a growth of 4.4 percent from the previous year, according to the Shanghai Economic and Information Technology Development Commission.

"During the dismal economic environment, the telecommunications industry grew at a stable rate," said Shao Zhiqing, vice director of the Shanghai Economic and Information Technology Development Commission.

In Shanghai, the number of mobile phone users touched 21.06 million by the end of last year, 12 percent annual growth, which means every resident has one or more handsets, according to the city's IT regulator.

By the end of 2009, China had a total of more than 13 million 3G, or third generation, users and about 5 million of them use 3G phones based on the home-developed TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access) technology, according to MIIT.

The 3G users base in China will hit 60 million by the end of 2010, a fourfold rise from a year ago, analysts said.