Mobile phones with WiFi functions will debut on the Chinese mainland as early as the end of this year after being restricted for several years in the domestic market, China's top telecommunications regulator said yesterday.

All handsets sold in the legal domestic market do not have the WiFi chips although the feature has been available and has been standard in most cell phones in overseas markets for a long period.

The WiFi-enabled phones will start selling at the end of this year or the beginning of next year. The output of WiFi phones is set to hit 200 million to 300 million units in 2009 in China, and half of them will be exported, said Xiao Li, an official at the Telecommunication Metrology Center under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

"Allowing WiFi-enabled phones doesn't mean the opening of Internet phone services such as VoIP (voice over Internet protocol)," Xiao said at a WiFi conference yesterday in Shanghai.

Disabling the WiFi function in mobile phones was due to concerns of the VoIP's challenge to the voice income of state-owned carriers, industry insiders said.

WiFi is a popular wireless technology used in home networks, mobile phones, video games and other electronic devices, which allows users to access the Internet from hot spots.

For mobile phone users, WiFi helps them to easily access data-intensive services on handsets, much faster than cellular networks, Edgar Figueroa, executive director of WiFi Alliance, said.

"WiFi is an attractive function for telecommunications carriers to promote FMC (fixed and mobile convergence) services," said Sandy Shen, an analyst at Gartner Inc, a United States-based IT consulting firm.

Major Chinese cities like Shanghai and Beijing have constructed WiFi hot spots. Figueroa said the availability of more hot spots and popularity of WiFi in mobile phones will spawn a new habit of users surfing online through their handsets, Figueroa said.

In 2012, WiFi hot spots in China will reach over 38,000 from 10,000 now, thanks to increased construction by China Telecom and China Mobile, the alliance said.

(Shanghai Daily October 14, 2008)