China: 420 million Internet users and counting

China continues to be a large consumer of Internet services. As of the end of June, the amount of Internet users in the country clocked in at about 420 million as of the end of June according to new statistics released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

Wireline broadband took the dominant spot with 363.1 million users (or 86.6 percent), while 276.78 million consumers used (or 65.9 percent) wireless as their Internet access medium. From an industry trend perspective, wireline and wireless users spent about 19.8 hours a week surfing the web.

With the country's total Internet consumption being 98.217 Gbps, China's three dominant Internet service provider players--China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile--reported their users consumed a total of 616.703 Gbps, 330.599 Gbps and 30.559 Gbps, respectively. These numbers will grow as these carriers step up their wireless and wireline broadband rollouts.

Such news should be welcome to telecom equipment vendors that are looking to gain a stronger foothold in China's wireline broadband market. While China's dominant form of wireline broadband is still arguably DSL, the country's largest carriers have been not only aggressively rolling out not only wireless broadband services, but increasingly Fiber to the Home (FTTH) networks. Besides dominant homegrown players (Huawei and ZTE), European vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson have been making waves in the country by securing contracts to supply their FTTP equipment to China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile.

For more:
- TeleGeography has this article

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