"My grandpa told me it took 10 days to deliver a letter from here to Lhasa by horse when he was young, but now I can reach my older brother there within seconds."

Rigzin, a 20-year-old Tibetan woman living at the foot of Qomolangma in Xigaze prefecture, said a mobile phone has become one of her most important possessions.

As of June, Tibet had 2.17 million registered mobile users, accounting for nearly 75 percent of the total population of the autonomous region, Li Zhen, chief of the region's industry and information technology department, said on Tuesday at a seminar.

(China Daily 08/30/2012 page2)