LTE represents almost 38% of China Mobile overall base
China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile operator, ended 2015 with 312.2 million LTE subscribers, according to the operator’s latest available figures.
The telco recorded nearly 222 million LTE net addition since December 2014, with the network currently serving 37.7% of China Mobile’s overall mobile subscribers. The carrier’s 3G network accounts for 20.5% of the telco’s total subscribers.
At the end of last year, China Mobile counted 826.4 million total mobile subscribers, including 1.05 million net customer additions in December. At the end of December 2014, the telco had 806.63 million mobile subscribers.
According to recent press reports, the Asian telco is looking to reach 500 million LTE subscribers by the end of this year. China Mobile initially launched LTE services in December 2013, using spectrum in the 1900 MHz, 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands.
China Mobile recently completed the deployment of more than 1 million LTE base stations across China. Plans for 2016 include the deployment of 300,000 additional base stations.
Rival operator China Telecom ended 2015 with 197.7 million mobile subscribers. The operator counted 58.46 million LTE terminal users, with a 51.38 million net additions in 2015.
China Telecom is currently offering LTE services using spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band. The operator obtained its nationwide FDD-LTE license in February, having previously launched “4G” services through a hybrid TDD/FDD network.
Meanwhile, China Unicom ended 2015 with a 286.6 million subscribers including 183.8 million on its 3G and LTE network. China Unicom recently announced plans to deploy additional LTE base stations across the country and that it expects to increase peak speeds of its LTE service to 330 megabits per second via the use of tri-band carrier aggregation technology.
