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BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- China Mobile, China's leading telecom services provider, announced on Thursday that its profit attributable to equity shareholders rose 0.2 percent to 108.7 billion yuan (15.8 billion U.S. dollars) last year.
The company's operating revenue also registered a yearly increase of 6 percent, reaching 708.4 billion yuan in 2016.
The growth was mainly backed by revenue from wireless data traffic, which jumped 43.5 percent from the previous year. This is also the first time in the company's history wireless data traffic has become the biggest revenue source, surpassing the combined revenue of voice, SMS and MMS, according to the company.
The company's mobile customers increased by more than 22 million to a total of 849 million in 2016. Meanwhile, the company had a net addition of 223 million 4G customers last year, bringing its total number of 4G customers to 535 million.
With 0.4 million new 4G base stations set up in 2016, China Mobile now has the world's largest 4G network, serving a population of more than 1.3 billion.
