BEIJING - The number of Chinese phone users continued to grow rapidly in the first five months of the year, surpassing 1.1 billion by the end of May, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) figures showed Tuesday.

China added 40.8 million phone users during the January-May period, bringing the nationwide total to more than 1.1 billion in a country with a 1.3 billion population.

During the period, fixed-line telephone users dropped about 7.8 million to 306 million while mobile phone users jumped 48.5 million to 796 million, according to the MIIT.

Meanwhile, the number of Chinese broad-band Internet users jumped nearly 9.8 million to 113 million by the end of May.

The telecommunications industry recorded about 1.23 trillion yuan ($181 billion) of business income in the five-month period, up 21.6 percent year on year.