Softbank Corp. said Thursday it has raised the target number of subscribers to its Yahoo! BB high speed Internet connection service by 50 percent.

The company, which has been posting losses due to lavish spending on luring new subscribers, said it is on track to meet its original goal of 4 million users by the end of March, and now expects to have 6 million subscribers by the end of September 2005.

Softbank chief Masayoshi Son has said the company could turn a profit as soon as it ends its costly subscriber hunt and becomes content with the present user population.

Unveiling the firm's October-December quarterly results the same day, Son said Softbank is not ready to end its aggressive quest for a larger share of the growing market of so-called broadband services, even at the expense of profits.

During the three-month period, the company posted a 16.3 billion yen net loss on sales of 136.6 billion yen. It said it spent 25 billion yen to attract new customers to the Yahoo! BB service during the quarter.

It did not give a year-before comparison because it is the first year the company has disclosed quarterly results. But the firm said its losses narrowed from the preceding quarters due to growing revenue from its Yahoo! BB ADSL service.

ADSL, or asymmetrical digital subscriber line, is one of the high-speed data networks, which also include fiber to the home (FTTH). It is called asymmetrical because the speed of data traffic differs for uploading and downloading.

The company said there were 3.8 million subscribers to the Yahoo! BB service as of the end of January, a market share of 36 percent.

Son said that, excluding expenses for luring new users, Softbank's broadband business could generate 60 billion yen in operating profit annually.

"But now it is clearly in sight that we can make a 120 billion yen operating profit with 6 million subscribers," he said. "And we judged it to be an opportunity that we can double the operating profit by adding only 2 million more."

He emphasized the company has the wherewithal to pursue its ambition further, pointing to its ample cash of 311 billion yen.