BEIJING-China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) announced the country had 170 million mobile subscribers and 196 million fixed-line users at the end of May.
During the first five months of 2002, China added on average 5.3 million mobile and 3.4 million fixed-line users per month. All telecom carriers jointly invested 36 billion yuan (US$4.35 billion) in network construction, which amounts to only 70 percent of the investment made in the same period last year.
The number of paging subscribers dropped by a figure of 10 million during the first five months of the year. According to MII’s report, there are now 25 million pager users in China.
At its peak, the east China city of Shanghai had 74 paging operators with 3.42 million customers, but the numbers now have dwindled to 51 operators sharing 2.66 million subscribers. The number of users keeps declining by 50,000 to 60,000 each month.
At a recent industry conference, participants recommended to merge small-scale operators with bigger ones and to avoid a price war. The price of a pager should not be more than three months’ service fees, participants said.
