China Telecom is the sixth operator to receive a license.

A Hong Kong-based spokesman confirmed Monday that China Telecom received the license in February, though he declined to provide any details.

Mainland media reported that China Telecom already had licenses to operate Internet cafes in 26 out of China's 31 provinces, and owns a network of self-run and franchised outlets, though the spokesman would not specify how many.

``China Telecom already has a well-developed strategy to operate Internet cafes in the provinces,'' Vincent Fu, a Beijing-based principal analyst for research firm Gartner, said. ``It bought a number of small operators and [has] revenue-sharing arrangements with some local partners, which operate under China Telecom's franchise.''

Mobile operator China Unicom, which won a nationwide license last year, said it had 367 cafes as of June, 2004.

Analysts say that by giving nationwide licenses to larger operators such as China Telecom and China Unicom, Beijing hopes to encourage them to buy out smaller rivals and reduce the number of operators, currently more than 100,000. Fewer operators would give the government a higher degree of control over its development.

``This is all part of the government's efforts to corporatize and commercialize the smaller operators in the industry,'' Fu said. ``The scattered nature of the industry makes it quite unwieldy at the moment.''

Alarmed by the spread of pornography, not to mention what Beijing regards as illicit political comment and too-free access to international news, the central government has launched periodic crackdowns on Internet cafes, sometimes shuttering them in the tens of thousands. More innocent fun is also fueling the growth of the Internet cafe business.

China's burgeoning online games industry, which grew 48 percent to 2.47 billion yuan (HK$2.33 billion) in 2004, according to government figures, is a major source of demand, with the cafes often providing the only access to computers for the 20 million online game players on the mainland.

Although fixed-line operators such as China Telecom and China Netcom had spent heavily in recent years to introduce broadband services, their lack of availability in areas outside big cities means only about 15 million homes have the high-speed connections online games demand.

China Telecom's broadband subscriber base, at 10.8 million, is more than twice as big as China Netcom's 4.2 million as of June 2004. mark.lee@singtaonewscorp.com