China has 952 mn mobile phone users

BEIJING, CHINA: The number of mobile phone users in China has crossed the 950 million-mark.

China had 952.31 million mobile phone users by the end of September, said the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Thursday.

A total of 12.22 million new mobile phone users signed up in September alone, the MIIT site reported in a statement, adding that China's 3G mobile phone users reached 102.46 million by the end of September.

According to the statement, the country's telephone users totalled 1.24 billion by September, with fixed-line telephone users dropping 363,000 in September to 288.43 million.

China's internet users with broadband access totalled 149.93 million by the end of September, up 23.64 million year-on-year, whereas the number of dial-up connection users dropped by 198,000 to 5.7 million.