The number of Chinese mobile subscribers topped 1.28 billion at the end of December. China Telecom ended December with a total of 185.62 million mobile telephony subscribers, up from 184.14 million in November. China Unicom had over 299 million mobile subscribers at 31 December, following net additions of 797,000 subscribers during the month. China Mobile reached 806.6 million mobile telephony subscribers in December 2014, up from 803.8 million at the end of November.
China Telecom saw a cumulative net increase of 0.04 million mobile subscribers for the January to December 2014 period. China Telecom’s LTE hybrid network trial has been expanded to reach a total of 56 cities by mid-December. China Telecom ended December with 106.95 million fixed broadband accesses, compared to 106.59 million the previous month. In the fixed telephony segment, China Telecom ended December with 143.56 million lines in service, down from 144.52 million at end-November.
China Unicom had over 149.1 million mobile broadband subscribers at end-December 2014, after an addition of 1.15 million subscribers in December. Total subscribers in the fixed broadband segment reached 68.7 million at end-December. During the month, the operator recorded a net addition of 15,000 subscribers in this segment. China Unicom ended December with 82 million local access subscribers, after a loss of 687,000 subscribers during the month.
During December, China Mobile saw 2.7 million net customer additions, while net additions in the 12 months of the year nearly reached 40 million. China Mobile's 3G subscriber base reached 245.7 million at 31 December, up from 242.1 million in the previous month. The operator ended 2014 with over 90 million subscribers in the 4G segment compared with 71.2 million at end-November.
