China's telecommunications sector realized a business volume of 1.468 trillion yuan (US$215.87 billion) in the first eight months of this year, a growth of 23.9 percent on the same period of last year.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on Sunday that the sector garnered 538.45 billion yuan in sales income in the eight-month period, up 8.5 percent.

Of the total revenue, mobile telecom business accounted for 54.38 percent, up 3.48 percentage points over a year earlier, and fixed-line phone services made up 35.98 percent, 5.76 percentage points lower than the year-earlier level.

Between January and August, the number of cell phone users increased by 68.71 million to 616.02 million nationwide, while that of fix-line phone users decreased by 11.57 million to 354.07 million.

Subscribers to broad-band Internet services numbered 79.35 million nationwide at the end of August, an increment of 12.93 million, or 19.47 percent, on the January-August period of last year.

Official figures showed that China's netizen population had reached 253 million by July of this year.

(Xinhua News Agency September 28, 2008)