China Telecom (CHA), which is the country’s third largest wireless operator behind behemoth China Mobile (CHL) and No. 2 China Unicom (CHU), said it added 8.58 million wireless customers during the third quarter of this year. The growth was just ahead of the 8.46 million customers the carrier added during the third quarter of 2010.
China Telecom ended the third quarter with 116.95 million total customers on its network, including 28.43 million 3G subscribers.
For the first nine months of the year, China Telecom said it has added 26.43 million new subscribers, which was short of the 26.89 million it added during the first nine months of 2010. However, 3G subscriptions soared from 5.08 million during the first three quarters of 2010, or nearly 19% of net additions, to 16.14 million, or just over 61%, this year.
China Telecom did not release average revenue per user results, but did note that ARPU through the first nine months of this year were falling behind full-year 2010 results.
China Mobile announced last week that it had added 16.7 million net customers during the third quarter ending the period with 633.5 million total subscribers. China Unicom added just over 5.3 million customers during the quarter, ending the third quarter with 189 million total customers.
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