China Telcos Announce March 2013 Subscriber Totals
Marbridge Consulting, 4/26/13
China's three main telecom operators have announced their subscriber totals for March 2013.
March saw the net addition of 13.24 mln new mobile subscribers. China Mobile (NYSE: CHL; 0941.HK) added 5.88 mln new mobile subscribers, pushing the operator's total mobile user base to 726.31 mln, of which a total of 114.37 mln subscribers used China Mobile's TD-SCDMA terminals during the month. China Mobile added 9.88 mln new TD-SCDMA subscribers in March, but lost 4.00 mln GSM subscribers.
China Unicom (NYSE: CHU; 0762.HK; 600050.SH) saw a net addition of 4.59 mln new mobile subscribers during the month, bringing its total to 250.71 mln, of which 162.89 mln were GSM subscribers, and 87.82 mln were WCDMA subscribers. China Unicom added 261,000 new GSM subscribers and 4.33 mln new WCDMA subscribers in March.
China Telecom (NYSE: CHA; 0728.HK) saw a net addition of 2.77 mln new mobile subscribers, taking its total to 168.03 mln, of which 74.07 mln were CDMA2000 EV-DO subscribers and 89.96 mln were CDMA subscribers. China Telecom added 3.20 mln new CDMA2000 EV-DO subscribers and lost 430,000 CDMA subscribers in March.
Of the combined total of 280.26 mln 3G subscribers, China Mobile holds 40.81%, China Unicom 31.33%, and China Telecom 27.86%. Of total new mobile subscribers added in March, China Mobile took 44.39%, dropping its share of China's total mobile user base to 63.43%. China Unicom's share of the total mobile user base increased for the 26th straight month, rising from 21.75% at the end of February 2013 to 21.90% at the end of March, while China Telecom's share increased for the 51st straight month, rising from 14.60% at the end of February 2013 to 14.67% at the end of March.
China Telecom lost 640,000 fixed-line subs, reducing its total to 161.70 mln, and China Unicom lost 402,000 fixed-line subs, decreasing its total to 91.28 mln.
China Telecom gained 1.19 mln new broadband subscribers to reach 93.18 mln, and China Unicom added 658,000 new broadband subs to reach 60.91 mln.
Editor's Note: To be comparable with other telecom operators, China Unicom adjusted the computation basis of "Broadband Subscribers" from the current quarter as follows: including Internet leased line users and not applying LAN user account conversion. After adjustment, Broadband Subscribers were 58.540 mln as of the end of 2012, 59.722 mln as of the end of January 2013 and 60.255 mln as of the end of February 2013.
For more background on this topic, please see "China Unicom Announces March 2013 Subscriber Totals" MD 4/19/13 issue.
Keywords: statistics China Telecom China Mobile China Unicom Internet telecom users mobile subscribers LAN 3G broadband subscribers CDMA GSM CHL TD-SCDMA WCDMA 0728.HK 0762.HK 0941.HK 600050.SH CHA CHU CDMA2000 EV-DO fixed-line subscribers market share
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