As anyone who visits China knows, consumers here are mad about their mobile phones, switching to new models faster than most other countries.

China now has 531 million mobile phone subscribers, and the number is climbing rapidly. Compare that to the dwindling numbers of fixed-line phones (the kind that just sits on the table, not in your pocket), which now stands at 370 million.

At a quickening pace, Chinese consumers are giving up their old fixed-line phones.

Here’s a blurb from a recent newsletter of Norson Consulting, a Beijing-based telecommunications consultancy:

“These figures show that Chinese consumers are now not only adopting mobile services at a faster and faster rate, but are actively abandoning their traditional telephone lines in favor of mobile phones.

“To make things even worse for the fixed-line operators, this shift is accelerating. October represented the highest monthly subscriber loss so far for both China Telecom and China Netcom, who lost 880,000 and 370,000 telephone customers respectively – up from losses of 730,000 and 270,000 in September. In comparison, China Mobile experienced its highest ever subscriber growth, with over 6.6 million new customers, and China Unicom reported a respectable increase of 1.49 million subscribers. For the time being, fixed operators’ telephone subscriber losses are being partially offset by increasing demand for internet access, with China Telecom adding 550,000 broadband subscribers in October while China Netcom added a further 460,000. Both operators have invested heavily in improving infrastructure and promoting their broadband services, and are likely to continue to do so. However, this may only represent a temporary solution due to continuing advances in mobile broadband technologies – a large number of Chinese consumers already access the internet through their mobile phone or wireless data card, and this will only increase once 3G services are launched.

To ease the panic of the old telephone companies, Beijing is contemplating letting them get into mobile service themselves. Here’s a snippet from a recent AFP story:

No detailed information was available from the government on how it planned to allow China Telecom and China Netcom to become involved in mobile operations.

Unconfirmed media reports have suggested that China Mobile's smaller rival, state-owned mobile carrier China Unicom, could be split up between China Telecom and China Netcom.

"Dividing China Unicom could be a way to do it," said Jiang Lifeng, an analyst with CCID Consulting based in Beijing.

"China Unicom has two networks, but in itself, it's not a very strong player, so splitting its assets could help reinvigorate the competition in the market," he said.