Koreans continue to sign up for cell phones, silencing those who claim the nation's mobile telephony service market has reached the saturation mark. The number of mobile subscribers crossed the 37-million threshold last month for the first time, growing by 189,000 from a month ago to 37.1 million,. This means about 77 percent of the country's population of 48 million carries at least one mobile handset. It took 10 months for the wireless user base to increase by 1 million after the figure topped the 36-million plateau last May. Last month was also special for the nation's three mobile carriers: the business leader SK Telecom, the runner-up player KTF and the smallest outfit LG Telecom. The customer bases of SK Telecom and KTF exceeded 19 million and 12 million for the first time by gaining 72,360 and 92,485, respectively. Accordingly, SK Telecom carved out 51.2 percent of the market while KTF's share stood at 32.5 percent. Shrugging off a two month-long exodus, LG Telecom boosted its client pool by 19,906, a performance which gives a cushion to maintaining the firm's goal of 6-million users. Currently, it retains 6.06 million customers for a 16.3-percent market share.