SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea has begun a limited Internet service for mobile phone users, a state website reported Friday, five months after the secretive communist state launched a third-generation network.

The Uriminzokkiri website said a new web page had been launched to give mobile users news from the official Korean Central News Agency and other content.

The service has begun "to meet the wishes of users who want to see news about the republic at any place and anytime," it said, without giving further details on how to access it.

Egypt's Orascom Telecom announced in January 2008 it had won the right to provide a mobile phone service in the North, a country which strictly limits the general public's access to information.

State media announced last December that the impoverished nation had launched its first 3-G mobile phone service.

More than 20,000 people had signed up for the service by April, according to a report by Choson Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper published in Japan.

It said the network could provide voice and SMS services to as many as 126,000 customers in the Pyongyang area and along the highway between the capital and Hyangsan 120 km (75 miles) to the northeast.

It was unclear how many local people were being given access to the network but the phones would be outside the price range of many, at 110 euros (153 dollars) for a basic handset.

The North, which fixes the tuning controls of radios and televisions to official stations, first began a mobile phone service in November 2002.

It shut it down without explanation 18 months later and began recalling handsets.