BEIJING -- China Telecom, one of China's biggest phone companies, expects to have 100 million new 4G customers in 2015.

China Telecom ranked second in the 3G and 4G markets in December by taking 20.5 percent of the market share, general manager Yang Jie told a meeting on Thursday.

China's 4G users topped 90 million at the end of December, almost a year after 4G licenses were issued to China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The 4G licenses allow the use of homegrown Time-Division Long-Term Evolution (TD-LTE) technology. TD-LTE is one of two major international standards in mobile telecommunication technology.