The number of telephone users in China rose to 472 million by the end of June, according to statistics from the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry on Wednesday.

To date, the number of fixed phone users is 237.6 million whilethe number of mobile phone users has reached 234.47 million.

According to the ministry, every 100 Chinese have 19.4 fixed telephones and 18.3 mobile phones on average.

The total income of China's post and telecommunications sector during the first six months of 2003 reached 246.4 billion yuan (about 29.7 billion US dollars), an increase of 11.5 percent.

The income of the country's postal service in the first half year was 26.42 billion yuan (nearly 3.2 billion US dollars), up 6.8 percent, and that for the telecommunications service was 219.97 billion yuan (26.5 billion US dollars), up 12.1 percent.

(People's Daily   July 23, 2003)