Telecommunications

In 2003, the post and telecommunication sector of the province did a turnover of 15.73 billion yuan, up 9.7 percent from the previous year. The sum includes 13.85 billion yuan from the telecommunication service and 1.88 billion yuan from the postal service. By the end of 2003, the number of fixed-line telephone subscribers had reached 8.985 million, of which 3.815 million were urban subscribers (up 1.4 percent) and 5.17 million were rural subscribers (up 24.3 percent). Meanwhile the number of mobile phone subscribers had reached 6.97 million.

There were 27.8 telephones to every one hundred people, up 5.9 percentage points on the year before.

The number of Internet users had climbed to 1.486 million.