China Mobile Reached One Billion Subscriptions

China Mobile confirmed the position of the largest mobile player in the world by connections. The operator surpassed the 1 billion subscriber mark at the end of Q2, adding nearly 9.3 million new subscriptions in the period.

The operator’s user base is more than twice that of the world’s second-largest player Reliance Jio in India which has 489.7 million. China Telecom was third with nearly 417 million mobile subscriptions, Bharti Airtel fourth with 355.8 million, followed by China Unicom with 339.5 million.

In 2Q19, just months before 5G launched in the mainland, China Mobile had 935 million subscriptions. Its net additions since then are larger than all but 23 operators worldwide. The operator closed June with 514.2 million 5G network customers, accounting for 51.4% of total subscriptions. Its 5G base station count increased by 351,000 in H1 to 2.3 million.