China is less than 50 million mobile subscribers away from reaching the 1 billion customer mark, according to statistics from the nation's three mobile operators.
The country's mobile subscriber base grew 1.3% in October to 951.6 million. China Mobile has the lion's share of 638.9 million, and added nearly 5.4 million subscribers during the month.
As of the end of September, China Mobile had 43.2 million 3G customers having added 22.5 million of these in the last year.
China Unicom meanwhile had 162.1 million total mobile customers, and 33.1 million 3G customers. China Telecom ended October with 120.3 million mobile subscribers, including 31.2 million 3G users.
The operators' customer data underscores the fact that the pace of 3G adoption has well and truly overtaken 2G net additions. China Unicom signed up 2.9 million 3G subscribers in October, but only 421,000 2G users.
Net 3G additions have meanwhile accounted for more than half – or 18.9 million – of China Telecom's 29.8 million mobile additions so far this year.
China Telecom's figures also show just how important its mobile operations have become to the fixed-line incumbent. In October, the company added 3.34 million total mobile users, but lost 560,000 local access line services, to bring its total to 170.4 million.