China's telecommunication sector reported earnings of 63 billion yuan in January this year, up 5.7 percent year on year, according to the figures released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Saturday.

The number of fixed-line users were down by one million to 339.8 million in the month, while mobile phone users grew by more than 8.4 million to 649.7 million, the MIIT data showed.

More people turned to broadband Internet connection as the number of dial-up network users declined by 2.53 million to 11.84 million, while the number of broadband users rose by 1.2 million to 84.6 million in January, according to MIIT.

(Xinhua News Agency March 7, 2009)