Mobile phone users must register

All mobile phone users will have to register with telecom providers within six months or face a cutoff in service, the Ministry of Information has announced. The new rule is part of a crackdown on telephone fraud and illegal text-messaging practices, and the country's thriving trade in counterfeit mobile phones. Up to 200 million of China's 377 million mobile phone users have pre-paid phone cards and buy the SIM card which activates the phone without any form of registration. "It's unfair if we require only new mobile phone users to register and ignore existing customers," said Chen Yuping, a senior official at the ministry's China Academy of Telecommunication Research.