China Unicom Adds 1.41 Mln New Subscribers In February

HONG KONG (Dow Jones)--China Unicom Ltd. (CHU), the listed arm of China's second-largest mobile operator, Monday said it signed up 1.41 million subscribers in February, setting yet another low for net additions.

Last month, the company added 911,000 users to its global system for mobile network and 502,000 to its code division multiple access network.

In January, China Unicom added a total of 1.436 million new subscribers, its weakest monthly performance in more than two years.

The February tally takes the company's GSM users to 86.06 million and its CDMA users to 28.87 million.

China Unicom is the only telecom firm in the world to operate both CDMA and GSM networks. It has the second-largest subscriber base among global CDMA operators and has the third-largest subscriber base among both GSM and CDMA service providers worldwide.

China is the world's largest telecom market, with about 340 million mobile users at the end of January and a mobile penetration rate of 25.9%.

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

-Edited by Andrew Bullard

(END) Dow Jones Newswires"

Posted to the site on 21st March 2005