China Mobile operating revenue for H1 2016 grew 7.1% year-over-year; now has 1.32M 4G base stations
China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile operator, ended the first half of the year with 428.5 million subscribers in the LTE segment, according to the operator’s latest available figures.
The telco recorded nearly 116 million LTE net additions since December 2015. During the first half of 2016, China Mobile added more than 200,000 4G base stations, increasing the total number to 1.32 million. The operator’s 4G network has now been expanded to cover more indoor areas in a larger number of cities.
At the end of June, China Mobile counted 837 million total mobile subscribers, including 1.6 million net customer additions in June. At the end of December, the telco had 826.2 million mobile subscribers.
The Chinese telco also had a total of 132.8 million 3G subscribers at the end of the first half of 2016.
The firm’s operating revenue for the period was 370.4 billion yuan ($55.7 billion), up 7.1% year-over-year, of which revenue from telecommunications services was 325.4 billion yuan, up by 6.9%
The telco’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the first half of 2016 was 134.4 billion yuan, climbing 2.9% compared to the year-ago period, while profit attributable to equity shareholders was 60.6 billion yuan, up 5.6% year-over-year.
“Our current strategy has the dual aspects of consolidation and future growth. For consolidation, we will be further building on our 4G advantages and increasing our 4G customer proportion. Our high-end approach with regards to wireline broadband will be maintained,” China Mobile’s Chairman Shang Bing said.
“We will challenge ourselves to obtain a one-third market share in the [information and communications technology] business through expansion of our corporate customer base. In terms of future growth, we will take a longer-term perspective, looking toward our digital services segment and increasing the revenue by understanding the important role that this business line will play for the company in the future.”
China Mobile expects to reach 500 million LTE subscribers by the end of this year, according to Li Yue, the operator’s president and CEO.
The executive said LTE subscribers will represent 60% of the telco’s overall subscriber base by the end of the year. Li also said China Mobile expects to add 100,000 LTE base stations across China this year, taking its total to 1.4 million.
By the end of 2016, LTE is expected to represent 90% of the telco’s overall traffic. China Mobile also announced plans to launch commercial voice-over-LTE services in more than 300 cities across China this year.
