China's No 2 mobile operator, China United Telecommunications Corp, will miss its target of adding 13 million new users this year to its two-year-old CDMA network, an official newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The firm, parent of Hong Kong-listed China Unicom Ltd, would not continue to issue user targets publicly in 2004, the International Finance News quoted chairman Wang Jianzhou as saying in an interview.

"The SARS outbreak in the first half of the year was the main reason affecting target completion," he told the paper. "But it does not impact China Unicom's overall profit target for the year."

Wang said in August that Unicom and its parent would shift their focus away from subscriber growth -- often achieved through heavy subsidies -- to profitability for its highly promoted CDMA network.

The firm, which also operates an older network based on the GSM standard popular in Europe, had hoped to have 20 million CDMA users by the year-end, nearly triple the seven million users at the end of 2002.

Wang said the CDMA network, which turned profitable in the third quarter of this year, would remain in the black in the fourth quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004.

The network had already achieved revenues of 70 billion yuan (US$8.46 billion) in 2003, the newspaper said. Analysts said the firm would target at least 12 million new users in 2004.

China United and its larger rival China Mobile, parent of China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd, have slashed prices to compete with a low-end wireless service known locally as "Little Smart", offered by China's two major fixed-line carriers China Telecom and China Netcom.

China United said last week it expected to launch a dual-band service next year that would work on both its GSM and CDMA networks.

China Unicom stock edged up HK$0.20 or 2.8 percent to HK$7.30 in morning trade on Tuesday.

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