China has been on the internet intermittently since May 1989 and on a permanent basis since 20 April 1994, although with limited access. In 2008, China became the country with the largest population on the Internet and, , has remained so. As of July 2016, 730,723,960 people (53.2% of the country's total population) were internet users. China's first foray into the global cyberspace was an email (not TCP/IP based and thus technically not internet) sent on 20 September 1987 to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, reading, "Across the Great Wall, we can reach every corner in the world" (). This later became a well-known phrase in China and , was displayed on the desktop login screen for QQ mail. History By the end of 2009, the number of Chinese domestic websites grew to 3.23 million, with an annual increase rate of 12.3%, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. As of first half of 2010, the majority of the Web content is user-generated. As of June 2011, Chinese internet users spent an average of 18.7 hours online per week, which would result in a total of about 472 billion hours in 2011. China had 618 million internet users by the end of December 2013, a 9.5 percent increase over the year before and a penetration rate of 45.8%. By June 2014, there were 632 million internet users in the country and a penetration rate of 46.9%. The number of users using mobile devices to access the internet overtook those using PCs (83.4% and 80.9%, respectively). China replaced the U.S. in its global leadership in terms of installed telecommunication bandwidth in 2011. By 2014, China hosts more than twice as much national bandwidth potential than the U.S., the historical leader in terms of installed telecommunication bandwidth (China: 29% versus US:13% of the global total). As of March 2017, there are about 700 million Chinese internet users, and many of them have a high-speed internet connection. Most of the users live in urban areas but at least 178 million users reside in rural towns. A majority of broadband subscribers were DSL, mostly from China Telecom and China Netcom. The price varies in different provinces, usually around US$5 – $50/month for a 50M – 1000M ADSL/Fiber (price varies by geographic region). By 2013, broadband made up the majority of internet connections in China, with 363.8 million users at this service tier.