China Mobile Ltd., the world’s biggest wireless-phone carrier by number of users, added record subscribers in October as China Telecom Corp., the nation’s largest fixed- line carrier, lost customers for the third straight month. About 6.6 million people signed up for China Mobile’s services last month, compared with its previous high of 6.
Phone subscribers in China may reach 746 million by the end of 2005, of which handset subscribers will approach 400 million and fix-line phone users will exceed 353 million, according to xinhuanet.com. Xi Guohua, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Information Industry, revealed the data at the China Telecom Annual Work Meeting for 2006. Since the competition of handset to substitute fixed-line telephones is intensified growth of handset subscribers continues to surpass that of fixed-line telephone. By the end of 2004 nationwide handset users reached 334.