China Mobile has set a target of reaching 500 million 4G customers by the end of 2016, it emerged this week.

To that end, it aims to deploy a further 400,000 4G cell sites, increasing its footprint to 1.4 million, said Shang Bing, China Mobile's new chairman, in a China Daily report on Wednesday.

China Mobile's 4G customer base overtook its 3G customer base in August, and by the end of October the operator had 267.3 million 4G users and 187.1 million 3G users. While the size of China Mobile's 4G base is impressive, it represents a little less than a third of the telco's overall subscriber base, so there is still plenty of room for growth.

Bing, a former vice minister at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), was appointed China Mobile's new chairman in August.

"Though we have built the world's largest 4G network, we need to expand it to more consumers and put more cutting-edge technologies into commercial application," Bing said, in the report.

With that in mind, he said China Mobile plans to deploy VoLTE next year, and aims to roll the service out to 260 cities by mid-2016.

The operator also seems to be eyeing over-the-top (OTT) services.

"We will conduct more acquisitions and investments to expand our presence in the Internet industry chain and to boost innovation," said Bing, in the China Daily report.

Totaltele.com