China Mobile plans to have 500 million 4G users by the end of 2016

China Mobile isn’t just the largest of China’s state-run wireless carriers, it’s the largest wireless carrier in the world, with almost double the number of subscribers as Vodafone, which is the world’s second-largest wireless carrier. The company didn’t fare too well in the 3G era because the standard it ran wasn’t all that popular, but it’s making up for this by taking full advantage of China’s 4G explosion, and it plans to have more than 500 million 4G users by the end of 2016. To put that into perspective, China Mobile’s 4G userbase will be larger than the population of the United States by 2017.