China Mobile expects to break 500m 4G users by end of 2016

Photo by The Tenth Dragon.

China Mobile, one of China’s three massive state-run telecom companies, is planning a 4G explosion in 2016. 4G is already well off the ground in China – in fact China Mobile already has more than 200 million 4G subscribers – but the company is planning a massive expansion in 2016 that will see it add 300,000 new 4G stations to significantly increase its 4G coverage in 2016.

But the company has an even more ambitious goal for 2016: China Mobile VP Li Huidi says the company expects to have broken 500 million users by the end of that year.

China Mobile currently has about 1 million 4G base stations, according to Li, so in 2016 it plans a 30 percent increase in coverage. Given that it’s aiming for something more like a 100 percent increase in subscribers, the company is obviously banking on more people in currently-covered areas to jump onboard the 4G train. Its 4G subscriber numbers have been growing quickly in 2015, so that my be a reasonable expectation.

4G is very important to China Mobile, because the company lost its position as the clear market leader during the 3G era, when its network ran on the less-popular TD-SCDMA standard. But it has had better luck (read: serious help from the government) with its 4G TD-LTE network, and is currently the 4G market leader. That’s a big deal because, according to China Mobile, 4G users generate 1.5 times the average revenue per user (ARPU) of regular telecom customers.

A lot can happen between now and the end of 2016, of course, but China’s 4G market seems poised for continued growth. As of this fall, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that the country has just 270 million 4G users. Given that it has 900 million mobile phone web users, the number who’ve upgraded to 4G so that they can access the web at high speed from anywhere seems destined to climb. And with China Mobile currently at the top of China’s 4G heap, it’s likely in the best position to reap the rewards.

Source: Sina Tech