China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd<600050><0762><CHU>, the country's second-largest telecom operator, said last Friday that its net profit may plunge more than 50% last year, as the one-time gain from the sale of a mobile business laid a higher comparison basis for 2008, sources reported.

In October 2008, the company sold its Code Division Multiple Access business and related assets to China Telecom<0728><CHA>, the nation's largest fixed-line operator. The deal substantially increased the profits of the company in 2008.

The company said in a statement filed with the Shanghai Stock Exchange that its profit was also affected by the high costs for its new wideband-CDMA operations.

China Unicom added 920,000 3G subscribers last December, compared with 801,000 users added in the previous month. The telecom operator currently has a total of 2.74 million 3G users. In December, China Unicom added 640,000 2G users, bringing the total to 144.85 million.

The number of its broadband subscribers dropped to 219,000 from the previous 325,000 in November. It had a total of 38.55 million broadband subscribers by the end of December.