China's mobile subscriber base expanded to 320 million by the end of October 2004, according to the Ministry of Information Industry. This expansion equals an average increase of 5.5 million new subscribers each month in 2004. Additionally, from January to October, text message traffic surged 62% from 2003 to more than 176.1 billion messages.

 

China Mobile has now reached a subscriber base of nearly 198 million. In October alone, 3,330,000 subscribers signed up for services of the state-owned operator.