China has world's largest number of telephone users

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 ◆ China has world's largest number of telephone users

China has the world's largest number of telephone users, 380 million at the end of July.

An official with the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) said recently that China had overtaken the United States in the number of phone users, but the number of fixed-line phone users in the US was still higher than China.

Statistics show that in the first seven months of this year, telephone users in China rose by 55.75 million, including 20.65 million new fixed-line phone users and 35.09 million new mobile phone users.

China overtook the US in having the world's largest number of mobile phone users, with 120.6 million, at the end of July last year.

According to the MII, during the first seven months of this year, the business volume of China's telecommunications sector stood at 307.99 billion yuan (37.24 billion US dollars), an increase of 28.69 percent compared with the same period last year.

By the end of last month, the number of Internet users in China reached 41.73 million, the rate of telephone ownership stood at 30.22 percent and fixed-line phone services were available in 85.3 percent of administrative villages across the country.