中國網站品牌欄目（頻道）
Mobile phone users in China will need to limit the number of Chinese New Year text messages they send during Spring Festival as part of a crackdown on spam messages.
An agreement among the country's three main mobile network operators last June stipulates that if the number of messages sent from a phone number reaches 200 within an hour or 1,000 within a day, the phone's message service will be suspended for a week.
For holidays and weekends, the allowable limit will increase to 500 hourly and 2,000 every day, it said.
Wei Leping, chief-engineer from China Telecom told China Daily yesterday that even during Spring Festival, the crackdown on spam messages will continue.
"Even though such strict measures to fight against junk messages are taken, many people still receive tens of such messages," Wei said.
Mobile phone subscribers received about 10 spam messages every week by the end of 2008, which means more than 300 million unwanted messages were delivered that year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The most common type of spam includes promotions for real estate, retail, traffic and tourism industries.
Li Dong, a salesman at Adobe said: "As a salesman, I have to send thousands of messages to my clients during Spring Festival. The operators have no right to close my text message service because I deliver too many messages."
Official figures show Chinese mobile phone users sent 18 billion text messages during last year's 7-day Spring Festival holiday, and the figure is expected to increase this year.
Wei said operators did not have the right to read short messages and decide which was junk and which was not.
There were about 700 million mobile users on the Chinese mainland as of July last year.
Questions:
1. Under the agreement made last June, how many messages can be sent in an hour before risking suspension?
2. What will be the maximum for an hour during the holidays?
3. How many mobile phone users are there in the mainland?
Answers:
1. 200
2. 500
3. 700 million
（中國日報網英語點津 Julie 編輯）
About the broadcaster:
Lee Hannon is Chief Editor at China Daily with 15-years experience in print and broadcast journalism. Born in England, Lee has traveled extensively around the world as a journalist including four years as a senior editor in Los Angeles. He now lives in Beijing and is happy to move to China and join the China Daily team.
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