China: 1 Billion Lines Served

China's three main carriers reached a milestone at the end of September, reaching 1 billion telecom access lines between them, according to statistics for the end of September provided by each of the carriers today.

China Mobile Ltd. (NYSE: CHL) had more than 508 million mobile customers, China Telecom Corp. Ltd. (NYSE: CHA) boasted over 241 million (including fixed and mobile), and China Unicom Ltd. (NYSE: CHU) had nearly 250 million. OK, so the actual total is 999.5 million, but we're rounding that baby up to 1 billion.

Here's the breakdown of where each operator stood at the end of last month.

China Mobile
China Mobile ended September with 508.4 million customers, having added 15.25 million during the third quarter, though the company notes these are mostly "low-usage customers."

The operator also noted it has 1.66 million 3G users at the end of September, up from 959,000 at the end of June.

Its revenues for the first nine months of the year totaled 327 billion China Yuan Renminbi (US$47.9 billion), up nearly 9 percent from the same period a year earlier, while net income was up 1.8 percent to RMB84 billion (US$12.3 billion).

China Telecom
China Telecom ended September with 194.4 million fixed lines in service, down nearly 5 million during the third quarter, while its broadband access customer base grew by 2.4 million during the same three-month period to 51.45 million.

The operator also had 46.8 million CDMA mobile customers at the end of September, an increase of 7.5 million since the end of June.

Third-quarter revenues totaled RMB52.2 billion (US$7.65 billion), up 16.5 percent from the same period a year earlier, but its net income slipped 47 percent to RMB3 billion (US$440 million) for the quarter.

China Unicom
China Unicom says it added almost 1 million GSM customers during September to end the month with 142.8 million mobile users.

Its fixed-line subscriber base dipped by about 500,000 during September to end the month at just over 107 million. The operator's broadband access customer base grew by 869,000 to reach nearly 37.5 million.

Unicom didn't provide updated financial numbers.

— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading