China Telecom added around 15 million 4G mobile customers in the third quarter of the year, but its overall mobile base is not experiencing as healthy a growth rate.
The Chinese operator had 194.34 million mobile customers at the end of September, up from 185.62 million at the start of the year.
Its 4G base stood at 43.73 million at the same date, up from 29 million at the end of June. It has added 36.65 million this year so far, growth kicking in after it received its full FDD LTE licence in February.
The telco said that the creation of China Tower – the passive infrastructure joint venture between China’s big three operators – earlier this month will help it to roll out 4G more quickly and cost-effectively.
China Telecom is unlikely to gain much ground on China Mobile in 4G though. Its larger rival had 247.62 million 4G customers, using its TD-LTE infrastructure, at the end of September, having added over 100 million in six months.
China Unicom, which does not split out its 4G customers, had 287.57 million mobile customers overall at the end of Q3, some 11 million fewer than it had at the start of 2015.
On the financial front, China Telecom posted operating revenues of 246.32 billion yuan (€35 billion) for the first nine months of 2015, up 1.1% on the same period in 2014. Service revenues grew by 1.9% to CNY221.07 billion.
The telco increased EBITDA by 2.3% to CNY76.51 billion in the first three quarters, and posted a net profit of CNY16.36 billion, up 1.2%.
