Telecom Equipment News
- 500 mln users mark China's 20th anniversary of mobile communications
Date: 23-Jul-2007 Sources: (Xinhua Online)
BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- China, a country where 20 years ago most of its citizens did not even have fixed landlines, is celebrating its 20th anniversary of mobile communications with 500million cellphone subscribers.
The 500 million figure was reached, and surpassed, last month, faster than original forecasts as reduced phone charges have continued to fuel public demand, particularly among rural residents and migrant workers.
Guo Xiaodong, a 21-year-old man from Sichuan Province working in a Beijing restaurant, bought a mobile phone last month for 500 yuan (65.8 U.S. dollars), choosing a China Mobile service package that offers free incoming calls.
'It's more convenient. My girlfriend back home can contact me anytime she wants. It also helps me feel like a city guy,' said the young man.
Most migrant workers or rural residents share this feeling. But unlike the traditional concept that a mobile phone is a luxurious fashion accessory, it is increasingly being seen as a necessity for daily life.
'Since the birth of the cellular phone, the advanced and convenient nature of mobile technology has left other ways of communications far behind. A continuously expanding demand for mobile telecommunications is a major reason for the rapid growth of Chinese mobile users,' said Professor Zeng Jianqiu with the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
In 1987, when China introduced its first mobile telecommunications equipment, there were little more than 700 users. In 2001, its mobile phone subscriptions passed the 100-million mark, the largest in the world, and the figure turned to 300 million in May 2004, 400 million in Jan. 2006 and now 500 million in July 2007.
The trend shows no sign of stopping as China still has a vast rural market to tap and city dwellers' appetite for more vogue, media-rich and web-accessible handsets continues to boom.
To cash in on the momentum, manufacturers, such as Nokia of Finland and Motorola of the United States, keep churning out low-cost phones and mobile phone operators like China Mobile and China Unicom cut call charges.
Beijing Mobile, a subsidiary of the country's biggest wireless carrier China Mobile, began operation early this month. Incoming calls will be free to all its customers from Aug. 1.
The Ministry of Information Industry (MII) earlier this year extended pre-commercial testing of its home-grown TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) standard to 10cities from the original five, while approving the use of Europeanstandard WCDMA and American CDMA to boost competition.
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