Over the past one month, the three state-run telecom giants have seen signs of recovery in their performance compared to June, especially in their highly-prioritized 5G market, where both China Mobile and China Telecom saw their cumulative 5G plan subscribers surpassing 130 million. Contrary to both its counterparts, China Unicom has yet to disclose their 5G plan subscriber statistics, even in July.
China Mobile’s 5G plan subscribers totaled to 84.057 million, showing a net increase of 13.858 million, while over at China Telecom, the total reached 49.27 million following a net increase of 11.43 million.
China Unicom, despite withholding its 5G plan subscriber statistics, were still to boast approximately the same base station count as China Telecom, from which it could be predicted that the difference in 5G plan subscribers between the two should be insignificant.
“There are different methods of counting 5G users, some of which differences can be complicated in practice. The number of our network facilities are still relatively low, and we are looking to expand our promotional effort once we ramp up more 5G networks. As the cost of 5G terminals was high last year, we think it is better to promote our 5G plans now,” said Wang Xiaochu, president of China Unicom. “Since the second half of last year, we have adjusted our mobile policy to focus on expanding 5G public users. Thus, we can expect to see an upsurge in the number of our 5G users in the second half of this year.”