China Mobile has reported a 3.4% increase in net profit for the first nine months of the year, driven by rampant 4G customer growth.
The operator reported a profit attributable to shareholders of 85.4 billion yuan ($13.46 billion) for the first three quarters of 2015.
Operating revenue grew 6.5% to 512.7 billion yuan, helping to compensate for high capex costs and a slight reduction in profit margins to 16.7%. Overall ARPU declined by a single yuan to 61 yuan.
China Mobile added over 157 million 4G customers for the first nine months of the year, taking its total 4G base up to 248 million.
As a result of this strong growth, China Mobile's data traffic increased by 151% to a total of 1,817.6 billion megabytes, while vice and SMS usage continued to decline.
The operator's total customer base increased to 822.9 million, with total net additions of 16.27 million, showing that the vast majority of 4G net ads were existing customers upgrading their service.
Notably the third quarter marks the first time China Mobile's 4G customers have exceeded its 3G customers - the operator had 195.3 million 3G customers as of end-September, down from 214.8 million at end-June.
Source: http://www.telecomasia.net/content/china-mobile-added-157m-4g-users-9-months