A record 250,000 subscribers used their cellphones in or around the National Stadium to share the excitement of the Olympics opening ceremony there on August 8, a telecommunications company official said on Tuesday.

"That's a new record in Olympic history, nearly double the number of mobile users during the Athens Olympic opening ceremony in 2004," a spokesman with the China Mobile said.

He said some 110,000 conversations were made through the China Mobile network per hour during the ceremony at the "Bird's Nest".

"We built 565 more mobile base stations around the 'Bird's Nest' before August 8," said China Mobile President Wang Jianzhou. "So we ensured a 100 percent connection rate for all users that evening. Even during the peak hours, only 70 percent of the network's full load was taken up."

According to mobile operators, international roaming fees have been substantially reduced. That for cellphones from Italy, for example, declined from 21 yuan (about US$3) per minute to 13 yuan, while that for Egyptian phones fell from 6 yuan to 4 yuan.

Since the Olympics started, 200,000 foreign mobile phones have been taken into Beijing, of which 70,000 are active every day. During the opening ceremony, more than 22,000 international roaming calls were recorded in and around the "Bird's Nest".

Meanwhile, mobile users are able to log onto the official website of the Olympics to watch live games being broadcast. Statistics show that 226,000 subscribers watched the opening ceremony via cellphones.

Another 12 million people also subscribed to the "Olympic Mobile News," which sent multimedia messages to individual cellphones.

(Xinhua News Agency August 19, 2008)