Telecom Operators Announce March 2010 Subscriber Totals
Marbridge Consulting, 4/20/10
China's three main telecom operators have announced their subscriber totals for March 2010.
March saw the net addition of approximately 10.9 mln new mobile subscribers. China Mobile (NYSE: CHL; 0941.HK) added over 5.97 mln new mobile subscribers, pushing the operator's total mobile user base to nearly 538.9 mln. China Mobile reported that nearly 7.69 mln subscribers used 3G terminals during the month, marking the operator's switch to a new metric for reporting 3G user totals; previously, China Mobile had reported only the number of subscribers who connected to its TD-SCDMA network, a figure that came to approximately 4 mln in February.
China Unicom (NYSE: CHU; 0762.HK; 600050.SH) added 873,000 new GSM subs, bringing its total GSM user base to nearly 147.3 mln, and added 759,000 subscribers to its WCDMA 3G network, for a total of over 4.8 mln WCDMA users.
China Telecom (NYSE: CHA; 0728.HK) added 3.3 mln CDMA subs, taking its total to nearly 65.5 mln.
Of total new mobile subs added in February, China Mobile took 55%, dropping its share of China's total mobile user base to 71.24%.
China Telecom lost 1.4 mln fixed-line subs, reducing its total to approximately 184.2 mln, while China Unicom lost 0.3 mln fixed-line subs, dropping its total to 101.8 mln.
China Telecom and Unicom enjoyed positive growth in broadband, with China Telecom adding 810,000 new broadband subs to reach approximately 55.8 mln, and China Unicom adding nearly 1.2 mln to reach over 41.5 mln.
Keywords: wireless China Telecom China Mobile China Unicom telecom mobile subscribers 3G CDMA GSM CHL TD-SCDMA WCDMA 0728.HK 0762.HK 0941.HK 600050.SH CHA CHU broadband subscribers fixed-line subscribers
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