China Mobile is channelling its energies into its TD-LTE business, adding well over 100 million 4G customers in the past six months.
The world’s biggest mobile operator published figures for the first nine months of 2015 on Tuesday, reporting 6.5% revenue growth to 512.74 billion yuan (€71 billion) on the back of rapid growth in 4G services and terminal sales.
The telco had a total mobile customer base of 822.91 million at the end of September, including 247.62 million 4G users. It added 18.35 million 4G customers in September alone and 104.54 million over six months.
"Driven by the rapid growth of 4G customers and the sound development of 4G services, the group’s data traffic operation continued to experience rapid development," China Mobile said in a statement.
It grew mobile data traffic by 151% to 1.82 billion GB in the first three quarters compared with the same period a year earlier.
However, the operator warned that it launched a new plan on 1 October allowing customers to carry over unused data. That "is expected to bring certain adverse impact on operating revenue and net profit" in the fourth quarter, it said.
4G growth comes at a cost, hence capex remained high in the first nine months, China Mobile said, without sharing figures.
It is undertaking a series of cost-control measures though, and as such was able to post 9.1% EBITDA growth to CNY192.3 billion (€27 billion), profit attributable to equity shareholders of CNY85.4 billion, and a 16.7% margin.
