Telephone coverage in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region increased last year, especially in urban areas.

According to the latest official figure, there were 26 telephones for every 100 urban Tibetans by the end of 1999. The average telephone coverage in the whole region was five out of 100, up 1.4 percentage points over 1998.

In the regional capital of Lhasa, 45 out of every 100 had telephones, ranking highest in the autonomous region, the statistics show.

Last year alone, the plateau region saw a total of 36,646 new telephone users, among them were 16,261 mobile telephone users. By the end of last year, Tibet had some 80,000 telephone users, a rise of 34.5 percent over 1998. The number of mobile phone users was close to 30,000.

To meet the increasing demand of local people, the regional telecommunications department expanded its switchboard capacity by over 7,000 lines to more than 156,000 lines by the end of last year.