China Mobile ended 2014 with 90.06 million 4G customers, just over a year after it launched its TD-LTE service.
The world’s biggest mobile operator on Tuesday revealed that it added 18.83 million 4G subscriptions in December alone. Its overall net additions for the month came in at 2.78 million, taking its total customer base to 806.63 million.
China Mobile stole a march on its domestic rivals when it commercially launched 4G services in mid-December 2013. It has signed up and migrated customers at a rapidly accelerating rate ever since, while China Unicom and China Telecom have yet to receive full licences to launch 4G services of their own.
The two smaller operators are waiting for permits to offer the more common FDD variant of LTE. They were given a boost in June when they got the green light to roll out trial hybrid TDD/FDD LTE networks in 16 cities and by the end of the year were able to offer services in 56 cities. They are expected to be granted full permits soon.
The trial licence was particularly important to China Telecom, helping it to reverse the hefty customer declines it witnessed in the first half of this year.
China Telecom added just 40,000 customers in 2014, ending the year with a total base of 185.62 million.
Including China Unicom’s 299.1 million subscribers, China had a grand total of 1.29 billion mobile customers at end-2014, up by 57.58 million on the previous year.
