China mobile phone user base tops 616 million in August 2008

There were 616.02 million subscribers of mobile communication services in China as of the end of August 2008, growing by 1.26% on month and 19.46% on year, according to statistics published by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT, previously known as Ministry of Information Industry [MII]).

The number of subscribers at the end of August accounted for 45.6% of the country's population (user density).

Also at the end of August 2008 there were 354.07 million subscribers of fixed telecommunication networks in China, translating into a user density of 27%.

In August 2008, mobile phone subscribers in China sent 57.31 billion text messages, averaging 3.02 messages per subscription a day.