China Telecom discounts 12.65 million CDMA subs due to credit doubts

China recorded its first monthly decline of mobile subscribers in its history, due to a difference in counting measures of CDMA subscribers between China Telecom and China Unicom.

China Telecom acquired China Unicom’s CDMA network in June, and in September China Unicom counted 41.73 million subscribers. However, China Telecom has disregarded customers who have not paid their most recent bill – 93.2 per cent of subscribers are post-paid – or those who the operator doubted would pay in the future.

China Telecom also reported a further loss of 680,000 CDMA customers in October, bringing the total to 28.4 million, a decline of 31.9 per cent on the figures reported by China Unicom at the end of September.

However, GSM customers in the world’s largest market grew by 8.41 million, taking the total to 573.85 million. Market leader China Mobile ended October with 441.91 million subscribers. Counting both GSM and CDMA subscribers, the total Chinese mobile users stand at 602.25 million.