China’s big three mobile operators added another 20.6 million 4G subscribers in June, taking the country’s total to 884.5 million.

Since the beginning of the year, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom added a combined 123.2 million LTE users, averaging 20.5 million adds a month, which puts the country on track to hit the 1 billion milestone in late December.

According to GSMA Intelligence, global LTE connections reached 2.19 billion at end-June and are forecast to top 2.45 billion by the year-end. Surpassing the 1 billion threshold will give China 41 per cent of global 4G connections.

China Mobile added 10.4 million 4G subs in June, taking its total to nearly 594 million. Second ranked China Unicom picked up 5.43 million new 4G users in the month, ending June with almost 139 million 4G users, while rival China Telecom added 4.77 million, bringing its 4G total to 152 million.

At the end of Q2, 4G connections accounted for 65 per cent of China’s 1.37 billion total mobile connections.