Mobile subscribers up in Dec

China, the world's largest mobile phone market by subscribers, posted a 0.5 percent monthly increase in the number of mobile subscribers to 1.23 billion in December 2013, data from the country's three telecommunications operators showed Monday.

Of the total number of mobile subscri-bers, nearly one-third of them are 3G subscribers, the data showed.

The number of China Mobile's 3G subscribers grew by 5.8 percent month-on-month in December, much faster than its two smaller counterparts - China Unicom and China Telecom.