BEIJING - The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced Tuesday the main business revenue of the nation's telecommunication sector reached 988 billion yuan ($157 billion) in 2011, up 10 percent year-on-year.

Meanwhile, overall users of fixed-line and mobile phones as well as Internet were charged 4.8 percent less than in the previous year, MIIT chief engineer Zhu Hongren said at a press conference held in Beijing.

Zhu said that as of the end of December, the number of phone users reached 1.27 billion, of which 128 million were 3G users. In 2011 alone, 3G users increased by 81.37 million.

He also said that the number of China's Internet users hit 513 million, or 38.3 percent of the nation's population.