China Telecom Corp, the biggest fixed-line phone operator in the country, said its revenue excluding amortization of upfront connection fees, rose 6.4 percent in the first nine months from a year ago.

The rise was spurred by more business from value-added services and the fast-growing broadband Internet sector.

It posted revenue of 121.68 billion yuan (US$15.03 billion) for the January-September period.

Including the connection fees, operating revenue stood at 126.78 billion yuan, China Telecom said in a statement posted on its Website.

For the third quarter, the firm posted 37.66 billion yuan in revenue. It didn't give a third quarter profit figure in the statement.

Its number of core telephone access lines in service reached 206.86 million at the end of September, up from 202.4 million at the end of June.

Its broadband service, which analysts expect to be a major earnings growth engine for the company in future, saw the subscriber group grow to 19.17 million from 17.37 million at the end of June. There was a net addition of 5.33 million subscribers in the nine months.

Elsewhere, 11.9 billion messages were sent under its short message system in the first nine months against 7.3 billion at the end of June.

Domestic fixed-line phone companies have invested heavily to diversify their businesses to those non-voice services as growth in their core sector slows as the market has become more mature in recent years, analysts said.

For example, China Telecom and China Netcom, the second largest fixed-line phone company, have both started commercial trials on Internet protocol TV with Shanghai Media Group, the country's only such licensee so far.

(Shanghai Daily October 21, 2005)