China Mobile chairman Shang Bing has outlined the company’s network investment strategy and growth plans for 2017.
China Mobile revenue in H1 2017
# Operating revenue of RMB388.9 billion (+5 percent)
# Telecommunications service revenue of RMB348.0 billion (+6.9 percent)
# EBITDA of RMB140.7 billion (+4.7 percent)
# Profit of RMB62.7 billion (+3.5 percent)
# Mobile customers of 867 million (+17.61 million)
# Wireline broadband customers of 93.04 million (+15.42 million)
# Wireline broadband revenue of RMB17.9 billion (+49.8 percent)
# Broadband ARPU of RMB34.9 (+4.6 percent)
China Mobile strategy
China Mobile has pursued its strategy of “Big Connectivity”, rode on the development of 4G and household broadband as well as driving ahead with the integrated development of its four growth engines.
China Mobile chairman Shang Bing said business transformation has yielded positive results, with revenue from wireless data traffic reaching RMB187.7 billion, accounting for more than 50 percent of the telecommunications services revenue.
China Mobile increased the total number of 4G base stations to 1.65 million, making the 4G TD-LTE network the largest in the world, in the first half of 2017.
China Mobile added 58.62 million 4G customers after slashing the basic 4G tariffs. The total number of 4G customers has reached 594 million and the 4G penetration rate of mobile customers has achieved 69 percent in the first half of 2017.
“In every three 4G users in the world, there is one China Mobile customer. The company is on track to achieve its target of a net increase of 100 million 4G customers this year. We launched VoLTE HD voice services in 313 cities, with the total number of customers exceeding 98.73 million,” China Mobile chairman Shang Bing said.
The average handset data traffic per user per month, or DOU, of 4G customers reached 1.4GB, the total handset data traffic increased by 107.5 percent.
China Mobile added 15.42 million broadband customers, bringing the number of wireline broadband customers to 93.04 million in H1. China Mobile is targeting to achieve wireline broadband customer base of more than 100 million in 2017.
Customers opting for products with bandwidth of 20Mbps or above accounted for 87.5 percent of the total wireline broadband customers, representing an increase of 10.6 percentage points from the end of last year.
IoT
China Mobile said its IoT service connections exceeded 150 million. The increasing scale of smart connections provided a take-off point for broadening IoT applications. The company will further expand the pace of IoT adoption, with a target to add 100 million smart connections in 2017.
The IoT platform, together with Internet of Vehicles, industrial manufacturing, smart wearables, education and healthcare, municipal administration and other IoT applications will be growth areas for China Mobile.
China Mobile has started to construct its mobile IoT network in 346 cities across China and has accelerated the transition to the next generation of cloud network based on SDN (Software Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Function Virtualization).
5G
China Mobile will commence field tests for 5G and drive the business forward taking into account the maturity of the 5G standard and the related business model.
4G
China Mobile aims to grow the number of 4G customers to in excess of 630 million and VoLTE customers to over 150 million by the end of this year.
