MIIT Says Telecom Growth Outpaced GDP Growth Last Year

Everyone knows China's GDP has been climbing at a pretty astonishing rate for some time now. But the telecommunications industry is growing too, and at a conference today MIIT chief engineer Wang Xiujun announced that for the first time ever, telecom industry growth outpaced GDP growth in 2011 in China.

The overall telecom industry growth was 10 percent, Wang reported, and revenues rose 15.5 percent over the previous year for a total of over 11 trillion RMB ($1.7 trillion). Some other impressive stats Wang shared about China's telecom industry as of the end of 2011:

• China has 1.27 billion phone users.
• China has 986 million mobile phone users.
• China has 128 million 3G users.
• China has 156 million broadband subscribers, 84 percent of which have at least 2 Mb/sec connections.
• China has 513 million total net users.
• China has 13.5 million IPTV users.
• China has 59 million people watching video on their phones.

Impressed yet? If not, 2012 should bring further improvements. Wang said goals include better broadband penetration, three-network (phone, internet, TV) integration, and just generally making things better. Here's hoping they'll get to work on the abysmally slow internet. [via Sina Tech]