China reports 200 million 4G customers, India may acquire 15 million 4G subscribers by 2015: Report

By the time Indians began murmuring about the 4G revolution across the nation, China has already crossed 200 million 4G customers. China Mobile, Chinese state-owned telecommunications company announced at the recent Mobile World Congress that 4G subscribers in China crossed 200 millionth customer.

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The growth is so massive that by June end, China Mobile reported only 190 million customers and by July 14 (in 14 days), it managed to add the rest of the 10 million customers.

China Mobile began 4G only 14 months ago, and by February 2015, it acquired 100 million subscribers for 4G. 250 million users was its set target of 4G customers by the end of the year.

China already had half a billion 3G customers, who began shifting to 4G which has similar pricing plans like that of 3G. Also, the availability of 4G smartphones for cheaper rates encouraged the growth.

Another interesting factor is that the 200 million 4G customers constitute only 25 percent of the nation, which means 75 percent population are still potential customers of 4G. For this massive growth, the government has already installed 9,00,000 4G nodes across China, which implies 40 percent of nodes on earth belong to China.

Hand-in-hand, the research for 5G is aggressively progressing in the country.

A comparison with India

According to a recent survey published by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), India will have 15 million 4G subscribers by 2015 end, much lower when compared to China. Competitive pricing, affordable smartphone, quality networks are the reasons cited for this estimated growth.