China telecommunications industry revenue up 4.9%

BEIJING - China's telecommunications industry revenue grew steadily in the first two months mainly due to fast expanding mobile data and mobile internet services, official data showed.

The revenue rose by 4.9 percent year-on-year to 216.8 billion yuan ($34.4 billion) in the January-February period, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Income from mobile data and mobile Internet services surged 15.1 percent to 99.5 billion yuan, accounting for almost 46 percent of the total, the MIIT data showed.

The number of mobile phone users in China increased by 24.06 million in the first two months to 1.44 billion by the end of February, of whom 71.6 percent are 4G subscribers.

Meanwhile, the thriving of Internet-based chat apps in China has driven the total call time of mobile phone users to decline further, while short message business volume jumped due to Spring Festival greetings.

China will cut telecommunication charges to boost the development of the digital economy, with domestic data roaming fees to be abolished starting July 1 to ensure a more than 30-percent reduction in data fees this year, according to a decision made at a State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang last week.

The government will push for lower fees for family broadband packages, exclusive network services for medium and small enterprises, and overseas roaming services.