Operators Announce July 2009 Subscriber Totals
Marbridge Consulting, 8/20/09
China's three main telecom operators have announced their subscriber totals for July 2009.
July saw the net addition of approximately 7.7 mln new mobile subscribers, of which subscribers to China Mobile (NYSE: CHL; 0941.HK) comprised under 4.6 mln, pushing the operator's total GSM user base to 497.7 mln. In July, a total of nearly 1.1 mln subscribers used China Mobile's TD-SCDMA network services. China Unicom (NYSE: CHU; 0762.HK; 600050.SH) added fewer than 0.7 mln new GSM subs, bringing its total to nearly 141.1 mln, and China Telecom (NYSE: CHA; 0728.HK) added less than 2.5 mln CDMA subs, pushing its total above 41.7 mln. Of total new subs added in July, China Mobile took 59% (in contrast to the 75-95% it consistently took each month until the end of 2008), bringing its share of China's total mobile user base to 73.1%.
China Telecom lost 1.7 mln fixed-line subs, reducing its total to approximately 197.7 mln, while China Unicom lost 331,000 fixed-line subs for a total of 108.1 mln.
China Telecom and Unicom enjoyed positive growth in broadband, with China Telecom adding 820,000 new users to reach under 49.9 mln, and China Unicom adding 814,000 to reach 35.7 mln.
Keywords: wireless broadband subscribers statistics market share China Telecom China Mobile China Unicom telecom mobile subscribers CDMA GSM CHL TD-SCDMA 0728.HK 0762.HK 0941.HK 600050.SH CHA CHU 3G fixed-line subscribers