Businessweek

China Mobile Limited provides a range of mobile telecommunications services. The company offers its services in all 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and directly-administered municipalities in Mainland China, as well as in Hong Kong. The company offers mobile telecommunications services principally using the global system for mobile communications (GSM) standard. It intends to use its GSM network to primarily carry voice usage and certain data traffic from mobile phones. The company’s GSM networks reach various cities and counties, and major roads and highways, as well as a part of rural areas, throughout Mainland China, and through the network of Hong Kong Mobile, a part of Hong Kong. The company also offers mobile telecommunications services using the time division synchronous code division multiple access standard. As of March 31, 2013, the company’s total number of customers reached approximately 726.3 million and total number of 3G customers reached approximately 114.4 million. In addition, the company provides its customers with high-speed Internet access through wireless local area networks (WLAN) (also known as Wi-Fi), through its WLAN access points located throughout Mainland China. It intends to use its WLAN network to primarily carry Internet data from computers, mobile phones, and other terminals. As of December 31, 2012, the company had approximately 3.83 million access points covering locations, such as airports, hotels, conference centers, schools, and exhibition centers throughout Mainland China. In 2013, the company commenced investments in the development of TDD mode long-term evolution (TD-LTE) network. In addition, it started providing commercial 4G services in Hong Kong with the LTE FDD and TD-LTE bandwidths in 2012. Businesses The company’s businesses primarily consist of voice business and data business. Voice Business The company’s voice business includes voice usage services and voice value-added services. The company’s voice usage services focus on enabling its customers make and receive calls with a mobile phone at any point within the coverage area of its mobile telecommunications networks. The services include local calls, domestic long distance calls, international long distance calls, domestic roaming, and international roaming. Its voice value-added services primarily include caller identity display, caller restrictions, call waiting, call forwarding, call holding, voice mail, conference calls, and other services. Data Business The company’s data business includes short message and multimedia message services (SMS and MMS), wireless data traffic business and applications, and information services. SMS refers to services that employ the existing network resources and the corresponding functions of mobile telecommunications terminals to deliver and receive text messages, primarily, including customer-to-customer messages, corporate SMS, ‘Monternet’-based short messages. MMS is a technology that allows users to exchange multimedia communications, such as graphics, animated color pictures, sound files, and short text messages, through wireless networks. SMS usage reached 744.5 billion messages in 2012. The company’s wireless data traffic business includes mobile data traffic service and WLAN service. Mobile Data Traffic: The company’s mobile data traffic service is a service that enables wireless access to the Internet through 2G or 3G networks. It had a mobile data traffic of 289.8 billion megabytes in 2012. WLAN: WLAN service refers to a service that provides high-speed Internet access through WLAN. As of December 31, 2012, the company had approximately 3.83 million access points covering locations, such as airports, hotels, conference centers, schools, and exhibition centers throughout Mainland China. The company’s applications and information services primarily include Mobile Mailbox, Mobile Reading, Mobile Video, Mobile Gaming, Wireless Music, ‘Fetion’, ‘12580 Integrated Information Service Line’, Mobile Payment/Wallet, location-based services, Mobile Animation, and Mobile Market. Mobile Mailbox: Mobile Mailbox provides the company’s custome