China Unicom is also expanding its AI infrastructure, with more than 1.1 million data center cabinets and computing capacity reaching 45 EFLOPS
In sum – what to know:
AI spending rises – Over 35% of 2026 capex allocated to computing infrastructure as AI demand increases.
AI revenue growth – AI-related revenue rose 147%, with computing power reaching 15.4% of service revenue.
Stable operations – Revenue and profit grew modestly, while subscribers surpassed 1.2 billion and 5G expanded further.
Chinese carrier China Unicom has announced plans to reduce capital expenditure by nearly 8% in 2026 while it expects to allocate more than one-third of its budget to computing infrastructure, reflecting a shift toward artificial intelligence.
The operator expects capex to fall to about CNY 50 billion ($7.2 billion) in 2026 from CNY 54.2 billion in 2025, with more than 35% directed toward computing power. This comes as AI-related revenue increased 147% year-on-year, with computing power businesses accounting for 15.4% of the carrier’s service revenue.
China Unicom is also expanding its AI infrastructure, with more than 1.1 million data center cabinets and computing capacity reaching 45 EFLOPS.
Financial performance remained stable, with service revenue at CNY 347.7 billion and net profit rising 1% to CNY 20.8 billion. Free cash flow increased 28.5% to RMB 36 billion. Meanwhile, data center revenue was CNY 28.1 billion for 2025, up by 8.5% year-on-year.
The telco’s total subscriber base exceeded 1.2 billion at the end of 2025, including more than 700 million IoT connections, while 5G-Advanced networks were deployed in over 330 cities across China.
Its cloud-related revenue grew 5.2%, supported by deployments across government and enterprise customers, the telco said.
China Unicom also said it has promoted the capacity expansion of gigabit broadband and the upgrade of 10-gigabit broadband, and launched pre-commercial trial of 10-gigabit optical fiber networks in more than 100 cities. It made deployments in frontier fields such as 6G and quantum communications, and launched quantum-secure leased lines.
“The company supported the construction of government clouds for over 180 provinces and municipalities as well as the digital and intelligent transformation of nearly 400,000 corporate customers,” China Unicom said.
China Unicom is not the only carrier in China shifting to AI. During MWC 2026, Liu Guiqing, president of China Telecom, said the operator is accelerating its transition from a traditional telecom provider into a technology-oriented company built around artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, and computing power services.
China Telecom has already deployed AI across internal operations, including network management and software development. The company said AI-based systems have reduced the number of on-site repair visits by field technicians by 35%, while AI-generated code now accounts for 40% of software development, improving R&D efficiency by 20%.
Looking ahead, Liu said telecom operators must adapt their strategies to the growing influence of AI technologies. He outlined five proposals for the industry, including aligning 6G standard development with AI evolution, strengthening cloud-network integration, improving AI security governance, coordinating computing power and energy resources, and expanding global cooperation on AI models and applications.
Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia, told RCR Wireless News: “The move by China Unicom symbolizes telcos’ plan to repositioning themselves as the AI infrastructure providers in the GenAI era. Traditionally telcos’ capex tend to focus heavily on network equipment, but the revenue from traditional consumer market has slowed down in the past few years. The adoption of cloud and AI services generates high growth for China Unicom, thereby justifying the increase in investment in AI compute, storage, and networking.”
The analyst sees a similar trend across all main operators in China. “This is a move that aligns not only with the increase in AI and cloud revenue by all main Chinese telcos, but also with the national AI policy and the rapid digitalization and AI transformation embraced by Chinese enterprise since the emergence of DeepSeek. Chinese telcos are at the forefront of converged AI and connectivity infrastructure and service providers,” he said.
