China Mobile Adds 3.312 Million GSM Subscribers In December

HONG KONG -(Dow Jones)- China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd. (CHL) said Thursday it added 3.312 million subscribers to its global system for mobile, or GSM, service in December, compared with a rise of 3.266 million in November.

In December, the net addition of subscribers to 21 of its provincial networks was 2.901 million, compared with 2.885 million a month earlier. The net addition to its 10 recently acquired provincial networks was 411,000, up from 381,000 in November.

China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator in terms of subscriber numbers, said in April it was buying 10 additional provincial cellular networks from its parent, China Mobile Communications Corp., for US$3.65 billion. The company started including the subscriber figures for the new networks in July.

For the year, it added 38.179 million users to its GSM network, bringing the total number of subscribers to 204.292 million. Of the total subscribers, 59.887 million were contract subscribers and 144.405 million prepaid customers.

-By Julie Wang, Dow Jones Newswires; 852-2802-7002; julie.wang@dowjones.com

-Edited by Sharon Buan

(END) Dow Jones Newswires"

Posted to the site on 20th January 2005