China's telecom charges dropped 13.6% in 2007, and the overall telecoms cost in the past five years was cut by half in the past five years, China's Information Industry Minister, Wang Xudong said on Wednesday at a conference.

The decline mainly resulted from the breakdown of the monopoly in China's telecoms industry and the establishment of "a preliminary market-oriented pricing system", according to Wang.

In response to phone users' constant complaint in recent years, the government urged the leading telecom operators in the country to offer lower pricing packages. Several state-owned telecom giants such China Mobile<941> and China Unicom<600050><762> started to provide service packages that offer free incoming calls this year.

However, price cuts did not bring down the mobile operators' profits. China Mobile's net profits rose 25.7% to RMB 37.9 billion (US$5.19 billion) in the first six months of 2007.

Currently, about 39.9% of Chinese people are mobile phone users. The telecom business volume accelerated to RMB 1.68 trillion, up 27% in the first 11 months last year