THE number of Internet users in China increased by 36 million in the first half of this year to reach 420 million, an industry report said yesterday.

Among these Internet users, more than 98.1 percent have access to broadband and about 66 percent, or 277 million people, use mobile devices to go online, according to the China Internet Network Information Center, also known as CNNIC.

In the first six months, 43.34 million new customers logged on to the Internet for the first time through handheld devices. About 11.7 percent of the country's Internet users do so only with their mobile phones.

Mobile Internet users are still increasing, but at a slower pace. The rate started to slow this year, partly because of high 3G service fees, the report said.

China's connection speed averaged 857kbps, much slower than in South Korea or the United States, China News Service reported yesterday. The average time people spend online reached 19.8 hours per week.

The engine driving Internet growth appeared to be social networking and online shopping in the past six months, the report said. Meanwhile, the users of online banks increased about 30 percent.

Rapid growth was even straining Internet resources, the report said. The current Internet network layer protocol, IPv4, will be exhausted in one year at this rate of growth, People's Daily reported.

Meanwhile, the first half saw a decline in the number of domain names registered in China, partly due to a crackdown on Internet porn.