China’s telecom sector had steady growth during January-May 2022 (Updated)

China’s telecommunication industry registered steady growth in the first five months of the year, with strong expansion in emerging businesses and 5G services, official data shows.

The telecom sector had 665 billion yuan (99.46 billion U.S. dollars) in total revenue during the period, up 8.5 percent year on year, according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Emerging businesses, including those in the big data, cloud computing, internet data center and Internet of Things sectors, continued to expand notably in the period.

The combined revenue of the emerging businesses of China’s three telecom giants — China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom — surged 34.3 percent year on year to 128.3 billion yuan, accounting for 19.3 percent of the sector’s total revenue, the ministry said.

At the end of May, China had 1.7 million 5G base stations, accounting for 16.7 percent of the country’s mobile network base stations. Some 275,000 5G base stations were built in the first five months of the year.

The data also shows that 5G mobile phone users of the three telecom giants reached 428 million at the end of May, representing 25.8 percent of China’s total mobile phone users.

–>Much more telecom data in the Addendum below.

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Image by ADMC from Pixabay

At the end of May, China had a total of 1.7 million 5G base stations, accounting for 16.7% of the country’s mobile network base stations. According to the official data, a total of 275,000 5G base stations were built in the first five months of 2023.

China ended May 2022 with a total of 899.3 million subscribers classified as having 5G plans (even though many only had 4G endpoint devices), according to the carriers’ latest available figures.  China network operators recorded a net gain of 30.18 million 5G subscribers in May.

China Mobile, the world’s largest operator in terms of subscribers, added a total of 18.21 million 5G subscribers during last month. The operator said it ended May with 495.13 million 5G subscribers, compared to 221.95 million 5G customers in May 2021.

China Mobile had added a total of 108.32 million subscribers in the 5G segment during the first five months of the year.

Rival operator China Unicom said it added a total of 4.93 million 5G subscribers during May. The carrier ended the month with 179.70 million 5G subscribers.

Meanwhile, China Telecom added 7.04 million 5G subscribers last month to take its total 5G subscribers base to 224.47 million. During the first five months of the year, the telco had added a total of 36.67 million 5G subscribers.

China expects to end this year with nearly 2 million 5G base stations, according to previous reports. Chinese carriers reportedly deployed a total of 654,000 base stations nationwide during last year.

The country’s 5G networks now covers all prefecture-level cities, more than 98% of county-level urban areas and 80% of township-level urban areas across the country..

Earlier this year, the Chinese government had unveiled plans to more than triple the number of 5G base stations over the next four years, targeting a total of 3.64 million by end-2025.

Under this plan, China aims to have 26 5G base stations for every 10,000 people by the end of 2025. In comparison, in 2020, there were five 5G base stations for every 10,000 people in China.

China is expected to reach 892 million connections in the 5G segment in 2025, according to a report recently published by the GSMA.

According to the ‘The Mobile Economy China” report, GSMA expects 5G connections in the country to represent 52% of total mobile lines in 2025, compared to 29% in 2021.

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Addendum from MITI:

Indicator name unit end of the month

arrive

than the end of last year

net increase (+),

reduce(-)

year-on-year

increase(%)

Total landline subscribers million households 18170 100 0.2
Total mobile phone users million households 166249 1966 3.4
Of which: 5G mobile phone users million households 42819 7334 109.2
Of which: Mobile Internet users million households 143568 2003 4.3
Internet broadband access users million households 55868 2289 10.6
Of which: FTTH/O users million households 52976 2426 11.5
Among them: users with a rate of 100M or more million households 52291 2443 13.4
Among them: users with a rate above 1000M million households 5591 2135 358.6
Of which: urban broadband access users million households 39415 1606 10.8
rural broadband access users million households 16453 683 10.1
Number of IPTV (Internet TV) users million households 36392 1540 10.2
Number of Cellular IoT End Users million households 159 498 19 576 26.8 _
Fixed telephone penetration Department/100 people 12.9 0.1
Mobile phone penetration Department/100 people 117.9 1.5
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Update:  BEIJING, Aug. 27, 2022 (Xinhua) — China’s telecommunications sector logged steady expansion in the first seven months of this year, official data showed.

The combined industrial revenue rose 8.3 percent year on year to 944.2 billion yuan (about 137.87 billion U.S. dollars), according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Emerging businesses, such as big data, cloud computing, internet data centers and Internet of Things, expanded rapidly during the period. The emerging business revenue of China’s three telecom giants — China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom — surged 35.1 percent year on year to 184.3 billion yuan.

In breakdown, the revenue for cloud computing services soared 131.7 percent year on year, while that for big data and Internet of Things surged 60.3 percent and 25.9 percent, respectively.

Steady progress was also made in the construction of 5G base stations:  By the end of July, the number of 5G base stations in China had reached a total of nearly 1.97 million.

https://english.news.cn/20220827/13db7111ef6545abaca284f1d49e2371/c.html

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References:

http://english.news.cn/20220703/41a9776edd9d44c0ad055252c4e35818/c.html

https://www.miit.gov.cn/gxsj/tjfx/txy/art/2022/art_b8491abea6324484a19b5438b08761a4.html

China’s telecom sector revenues reach almost $100bn in Jan-May

One thought on “China’s telecom sector had steady growth during January-May 2022 (Updated)

  1. As previously stated in other IEEE Techblog comments, you can’t trust any economic numbers reported by the Chinese government. That includes China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) which oversees areas including the internet, telecommunications, broadcasting, postal delivery, computer and other electronic hardware and software management.

    The MIIT is responsible for matters including:
    1. Guiding the construction of the information system.
    2. Promoting the development of major technological equipment and indigenous innovation.
    3. Safeguarding information security.
    https://www.miit.gov.cn/

    If you go to https://www.miit.gov.cn/gxsj/tjfx/txy/art/2022/art_b8491abea6324484a19b5438b08761a4.html
    you will see a set of telecom subscriber statistics (included as an Addendum within the above article) that seem highly inflated to fulfill the second MIIT objective above – “promote indigenous innovation.”

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