China's Internet users increased more than 20 percent to 137 million in the past 12 months, the biggest jump ever in a single year.

The rapid rise lifts the Internet penetration rate in the world's second-largest Net market to more than 10 percent for the first time, creating huge potential for online service providers such as e-commerce and advertising firms.

Breaching the 10-percent penetration rate will usher in an even higher growth period for the Internet population. Lower costs for Internet access should also help boost the popularity of the service. Despite increased time spent online, average spending by each user was 83.5 yuan (US$10.75) a month last year, a decrease of 18 percent from a year ago.

Among the entire Internet population, 90.7 million use broadband connections, accounting for nearly 67 percent of the total. Such high use paves the way for services such as online video and broadcasting.

More than 10 percent of China's Internet users logged online through mobile phones for e-mail, news, ringtones or game downloads despite slower access speeds and higher costs.

Total domain names amounted to more than four million, an increase of 1.2 million over the past six months. More than 1.8 million names ended with ".cn," up 64.4 percent from 2005 and representing a much faster growth rate than those with ".com" suffixes.

Source:未知