Subscribers to the global system for mobile communications (GSM) network of China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd. have risen by 3.025 million in August, compared with 2.705 million in July.

Among the new subscribers, nearly 2.718 million were from its original 21 provincial networks and 307,000 from the 10 recently added provincial networks, the company announced Monday.

In April, China Mobile announced the purchase of the 10 cellular networks from its parent China Mobile Communications Co. for US$3.65 billion.

The company started including customer numbers for the new networks in July.

At the end of August, China Mobile had 191.375 million subscribers, of which 27.418 million were from the 10 new provinces. Among them, 59.33 million were contract subscribers and 132.045 million were prepaid customers.

China Mobile's archrival, China Unicom Ltd., announced Sunday that it’s net addition of subscribers in August was 1.6 million, bringing its total to 105.84 million.

(Shenzhen Daily September 21, 2004)