China Mobile reported a net increase of 138 million 5G subscribers during 2023.
China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier in terms of number of subscribers, reached a total of 465 million 5G subscribers at the end of last year, an increase of 42.1% year-on-year, the company said in its earnings report.
China Mobile reported a net increase of 138 million 5G subscribers during 2023.
The company’s net profit last year rose 5% year-on-year to 131.7 billion yuan ($18.3 billion), and the carrier’s operating revenue rose 6.3% year-on-year to 863.5 billion yuan.
In the mobile sector, the company had a total of 991 million subscribers at the end of 2023, an increase of 1.6% year-on-year.
Capital investment totaled 180.3 billion yuan, accounting for 20.9% of communications service revenue, down 1.9 points from the previous year.
“We have cumulatively deployed more than 1.94 million 5G base stations. We planned the world’s largest RedCap commercial network deployment and built the world’s first 5G new voice network,” the company said. .
According to the latest official data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China raised investment in 5G networks to 190.5 billion yuan last year.
China’s 5G investment grew by 5.7% year-on-year last year, accounting for more than 45% of the country’s total telecommunications fixed asset investment. China’s total investment in 5G base stations reached 730 billion yuan last year.
According to official data, Chinese companies China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile and China Tower invested RMB420.5 billion in fixed assets last year, an increase of 0.3% year-on-year.
As of the end of last year, there were 11.6 million mobile communication base stations in China, of which 3.4 million were 5G base stations. Currently, 5G base stations account for 29% of China’s total mobile base stations. This ratio has increased by 7.8 points compared to the end of 2022.
According to the report, the total revenue of China’s telecommunications sector in 2023 was 1.68 trillion yuan, an increase of 6.2% over the previous year.
A local newspaper reported that the penetration rate of 5G technology in China will reach 90% by the end of 2023. Global Times We previously reported on this story, citing an executive at local telecommunications company China Mobile.
Bian Yannan, deputy director of China Mobile’s planning and construction department, said the company expects to achieve this penetration rate by deploying 360,000 5G base stations in 2023.
