Telecom Lead Asia: China Telecom’s net addition of 3G users has overtaken mobile subscribers in Q1 2013.

China Telecom on Friday said it added 9.02 million 3G subscribers in the first quarter of 2013 against 7.04 million mobile users.

Currently, China Telecom’s 3G users stand at 78.07 million, while toal mobile users are around 168.03 million.

During the first quarter, mobile voice usage was 137.85 billion minutes, said China Telecom on Friday.

China Telecom’s revenue in Q1 2013 rose 14.6 percent to $12.61 billion (77,818 million yuan).

The company’s net profit increased 10 percent to $761.5 million (4,696 million yuan).

China Telecom says the mobile services continued to grow rapidly with fast expansion in mobile customer scale and revenues. The number of mobile subscribers reached a total of 168 million, of which 78.07 million were 3G subscribers. The net addition of mobile subscribers was 7.41 million for the first quarter and the average mobile service revenue per user per month (ARPU) was stable as compared to that for the full year of last year.

Facing the challenges from the new Internet technology and the intensified mobile substitution, the number of local access lines in service of the Group declined by 1.30 million in the first quarter.

Services like Internet access and data services continued its robust growth momentum, which effectively offset the impact of decline in the wireline voice services. The wireline broadband subscribers reached 93.18 million, representing a net addition of 3.06 million. The fundamentals of the overall wireline services continued to remain stable.

picture credit: topnews.in

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