China Mobile added 17.63 million new customers in the first quarter to end March with a total of 667.20 million customers. Of the total, 59.56 million were 3G customers as the operator attracted 8.35 million 3G customers in the quarter. However ARPU slipped to CNY 65 from 74 in the previous quarter, and total voice usage dropped to 998.1 billion minutes from 1 trillion minutes in the December quarter. Year-on-year, voice traffic rose 10.1 percent. Meanwhile wireless data traffic (mobile and WLAN) rose to 148.4 billion MB from 144.0 billion in Q4 and went up 181.3 percent year-on-year. Operating revenues rose 7.8 percent to CNY 127.4 billion, from CNY 118.2 billion in the year-ago period. EBITDA totalled CNY 60.7 billion, up 4.5 percent year-on-year, while the EBITDA margin slipped to 47.6 percent from 49.1 percent in Q1 2011. China Mobile posted a profit of CNY 27.8 billion, up 3.5 percent from CNY 26.9 billion a year earlier.
