84.5 million Chinese uses mobile phones to surf Internet

84.5 million Chinese uses mobile phones to surf Internet

BEIJING, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- About 84.5 million Chinese wereusing their mobile phone to log onto the Internet, which accountedfor nearly 30 percent of the country's total netizens, an industryexpert said here on Tuesday.

Yang Zemin, director of the Telecom Research Institute under theMinistry of Industry and Information Technology, said Chinaregistered 68.7 million new cell phone users in the first eightmonths, which brought country's mobile phone user population toabout 616 million.

He estimated the number of Internet users had reached 275 millionby the end of September and 85 percent were broadband users.

The number of fixed-line users began to make a negative growth.Through August, the number of fixed-line users stood at 354 million,down 11 million from the 2007 figure, Yang said.

He added the total telecom industry revenue reached 540 billionyuan (79.1 billion U.S. dollars) through August, up 8.5 percent froma year earlier.