China Unicom continued to struggle after falling to third place in Q3, with 4G subscriber additions slowing to just 600,000 in October, down from an average of 3.5 million per month for the first nine months of the year.

The operator also lost 2.6 million overall subscribers in October to end the month with a total of 322.1 million. From April to September it added fewer than 400,000 subs.

Second ranked China Telecom picked up 2.7 million 4G users in October, while the market leader China Mobile added 1.5 million.

China had 1.28 billion LTE subscribers at end-October, taking 4G penetration to 80 per cent. China Telecom led with an 84 per cent rate, followed by China Mobile (79.4 per cent) and China Unicom (78.2 per cent).

During October, China Telecom added 2.1 million subs to take its total to 333 million, while China Mobile signed up 1.5 million to end October with 943 million.

In the third quarter, China Telecom moved ahead of China Unicom in overall customer numbers.