China Mobile rural coverage currently reaches 99.5%
BARCELONA, Spain – China Mobile plans to continue expanding coverage across rural and isolated areas of the country in an attempt to reduce the digital divide, explained China Mobile Chairman Shang Bing said during a keynote presentation at this week’s Mobile World Congress event being held in Barcelona, Spain.
Bing said the firm has already invested RMB 45 billion ($6.9 billion) in a project to provide connectivity services in villages across the Asian country, adding China Mobile’s coverage reached 99.5% of rural areas across the country.
However, Bing said the Chinese economy is facing some challenges, with telecom an important industry segment.
“It is also key for the domestic economy to improve its competitive advantage,” Bing said. “In this process, the communications industry is playing a very important and strategic role.”
The executive also said innovative Internet services are offering opportunities for value creation.
“We have seen that the economy is highly integrated with communications technologies,” Bing explained.
China Mobile said it ended 2015 with 312.2 million LTE subscribers on its network, recording nearly 222 million LTE net additions last year. The carrier’s LTE network currently serves 37.7% of China Mobile’s overall mobile subscriber base. The carrier’s overall customer base stood at 826.4 million subscribers at the end of last year, having added just under 20 million net customers in 2015.
According to recent press reports, China Mobile is looking to top 500 million LTE subscribers by the end of 2016. China Mobile recently completed the deployment of more than 1 million LTE base stations across China, with plans to deploy 300,000 additional base stations in 2016.
