The Chinese carrier ended the first half of the year with 384 million IoT connections
China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile operator in terms of subscribers, will continue to carry out tests on its 5G network in the second half of 2018, the firm’s chairman Shang Bing said in a statement.
“We will continue to proactively roll out trial tests on the 5G network and other tests on 5G applications in the second half of 2018, as well as invest resources into the 5G Joint Innovation Centre and study the possibility of cross-industry integration and applications that will speed up the commercialization of 5G technology,” he said.
“We are keen to generate returns on our investments and will plan our future investments on 5G taking into consideration the level of maturity of the industry and business models that emerge,” Shang added.
The operator’s net profit for the first half of the year grew 4.7% year-on-year to CNY65.6 billion ($9.6 billion), with operating revenue up 2.9% year-on-year to CNY392 billion.
China Mobile’s telecoms service revenue rose 5.5% year-on-year to CNY356 billion.
“In the first half of 2018, market competition has intensified and cross-sector convergence has increased pace. At the same time, operators were required to take further actions to comply with the state policy of speed upgrade and tariff reduction,” the executive said.
The carrier ended June with a total of 906 million mobile subscribers, after a net addition of 39 million subscribers since June 2017.
Also, 4G penetration reached 74.7%, taking the operator’s total to 677 million LTE customers, an addition of 83 million from June 2017. China Mobile also added 190,000 4G base stations in the first half of 2018.
IoT connections
China Mobile also ended the first half of the year with 384 million connections in the internet of things (IoT) segment, climbing 154% year-on-year. Revenue from IoT business grew 47.6% year-on-year.
“We are building out a high-quality NB-IoT network and will realize continuous coverage to areas at town level and above across the country by the end of this year. At the same time, we will continue to promote our self-developed IoT open platform OneNET, as well as constructing a high performance IoT smart service system, in order to provide quality one-stop service for our extensive IoT customer base,” the executive said.
“In the first half of 2018, our IoT business achieved rapid growth, with a net addition of 155 million IoT smart connections. In the foreseeable future, platforms and applications associated with areas including Internet of vehicles, manufacturing, smart wearables, education and healthcare will become important drivers sustaining revenue growth of the company.”
