(Telecompaper) China Mobile saw its nine-month profit fall 1.9 percent to CNY 91.50 billion from CNY 93.31 billion in the same period last year. Operating revenues grew 9.4 percent to CNY 463.01 billion, but EBITDA fell 0.9 percent year-on-year to CNY 185.67 billion. The EBITDA margin slipped to 40.1 percent from 44.3 percent in the year-ago period. The company said that during the period it experienced difficulties and challenges from increasingly complex competition in the ICT sector, greater impact from over-the-top products on the traditional communications services, and more intense horizontal competition due to the continued increase in mobile penetration. China Mobile added 44.89 million new customers in the nine-month period to bring its total customer base to 755.19 million. This includes 169.50 million million 3G customers.