Will an increase in mobile phone usage result in a glut in China’s mobile telecommunications market?

China's number of mobile-phone users may climb to 620 million next year, bringing the total telephone subscribers in the country to 976 million, the Information Times reported, citing a government official.

Sales from the country's communications industry may rise 25 percent to 2.5 trillion yuan ($342 billion) in 2008 from a year earlier, the newspaper said today, citing comments by Wang Xudong, who heads the Ministry of Information Industry.

China will eventually allow phone operators to set their own charges, the report said, citing comments by Wang at an annual working conference held in Beijing yesterday, without providing a timetable. Fixed-asset investment in the nation's communications
sector may exceed 200 billion yuan next year, the report said.

Carriers should be able to offer both mobile and fixed-line services as competition intensifies and technologies merge, the report quoted Wang as saying.

China had 539.4 million mobile-phone users at the end of November and 369.3 million fixed-line subscribers, according to government data.

Are you ready for China’s exploding mobile phone market, expected to reach 620 million users?