The third quarter data is out. Are the three major operators standing still or accelerating?

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Recently, the three major operators have successively released their third-quarter financial reports. Judging from the published data, the three major operators performed well in the first three quarters, and the overall development of the industry is positive. In the first three quarters, China Mobile continued to lead the three operators with a revenue of 648.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%. China Telecom achieved double-digit growth with revenue of 326.536 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.3%, and net profit of 22.709 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.3%. China Unicom also ranked first among the three with a 5G package penetration rate of 43%. Not only that, the total net profit of the three major operators has exceeded 100 billion yuan.

my country's 5G package users exceed 600 million, and mobile ARPU continues to rise

A week ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the "Economic Operation of the Communications Industry in the First Three Quarters of 2021". The report shows that as of the end of September, the total number of mobile phone users of the three basic telecommunications companies reached 1.64 billion, a net increase of 41.85 million from the end of last year. Among them, the number of 5G mobile phone terminal connections reached 445 million, a net increase of 247 million from the end of last year.

In terms of users, as of September 30, 2021, China Mobile had a total of approximately 956 million mobile customers, with a net increase of 10.2 million mobile customers in the third quarter, and the growth of mobile customers continued to improve; 5G package customers reached 331 million, 5G network customers reached 160 million, and the customer structure continued to optimize. In the first three quarters, China Telecom's mobile users increased by 18.64 million, continuing to lead the industry, reaching 370 million, and 5G package users increased by 69.04 million, reaching 156 million, with a penetration rate of 42.1%; similarly, China Unicom's mobile bill users increased by 9.742 million in the first three quarters, reaching 315.553 million, and 5G package users increased by 66.115 million to 136.945 million. From the data disclosed by the three companies, we can be sure that my country's 5G package users have exceeded 600 million.

In addition, thanks to the accelerated development of 5G, the ARPU of mobile bill users has effectively rebounded. It is reported that China Mobile's mobile Internet traffic in the first three quarters reached 90.8 billion GB, a year-on-year increase of 39.1%, and mobile Internet DOU exceeded 12 GB. In the first three quarters, the mobile ARPU was RMB 50.1, a year-on-year increase of 2.6%; China Telecom's total mobile Internet traffic in the first three quarters increased by 39.3% year-on-year, and the mobile user ARPU was RMB 45.4, which continued to grow compared with the same period last year; China Unicom's mobile bill user ARPU increased by 6.3% year-on-year to RMB 44.3. Mobile's main business revenue was RMB 123.324 billion, an increase of 5.8% over the same period last year. The continued rise in the ARPU of the three operators proves that the industry is sending us positive signals.

The 2B2C sector is developing in parallel, with outstanding performance in household and government business

In March this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Dual Gigabit Network Collaborative Development Action Plan (2021-2023)", which aroused strong social attention and brought a three-year "window period" for dual gigabits. The "Action Plan" clearly planned that by the end of 2021, the gigabit fiber network will have the ability to cover 200 million households and more than 600,000 new 5G base stations. The three operators continue to output in implementing the "Dual Gigabit" Network Collaborative Development Action Plan and stride forward.

In terms of home business, China Telecom focuses on all-scenario digital life, leverages the advantages of cloud-network integration, and creates a "three-gigabit" high-quality pan-connectivity service of 5G+optical broadband+WiFi6. In the first three quarters, China Telecom's fixed-line and smart home service revenue reached RMB 85.498 billion, a year-on-year increase of 4.7%. The net increase in wired broadband users was 9.11 million, reaching 168 million. Broadband access revenue reached RMB 56.896 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.8%. Broadband access ARPU reached RMB 38.8, which continued to rise compared with the same period last year. Smart home revenue increased by 30.3% year-on-year, driving broadband comprehensive ARPU to RMB 46.1, a year-on-year increase of 4.5%.

China Mobile insists on quality-driven broadband leadership, content-driven TV leadership, and application-driven smart home leadership, maintaining the growth of both volume and revenue in the home market. As of September 30, 2021, the total number of China Mobile's wired broadband customers reached 235 million, with a net increase of 25.03 million in the first three quarters, including a net increase of 21.64 million home broadband customers; in the first three quarters, the wired broadband ARPU was RMB 34.8, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%, and the home broadband comprehensive ARPU was RMB 39.8, a year-on-year increase of 10.7%.

China Unicom also continues to strengthen the core capabilities of the Smart Community and Smart Wojia platforms, promote the Digital Rural Service Cloud Platform, and continuously strengthen the differentiated competitiveness of its broadband business. In the first three quarters of 2021, China Unicom's fixed-line broadband users increased by 6.903 million to 92.998 million. Fixed-line broadband access revenue reached RMB 33.341 billion, up 3.9% from the same period last year.

Not only in the ToC field, the three major operators have also accelerated in the ToB track. In terms of government and enterprise business, China Telecom deeply integrates digital economic elements and emerging information technology, encapsulates atomic capabilities with 5G, Tianyi Cloud and security as the core, stimulates strong market demand, and the 5G business model continues to enrich and mature, and benchmark projects are widely replicated; China Mobile also continues to promote the integrated development of "cloud + network + DICT" in government and enterprise business, and the growth momentum of the government and enterprise market is strong. In the first three quarters, China Mobile's DICT business revenue reached RMB 48.9 billion, maintaining rapid growth; China Unicom seizes the needs of economic and social digitalization, networking, and intelligent transformation, actively plays the advantages of resource endowment, continues to empower government and enterprise customers and household customers, and promotes the pan-integration development of innovative business and basic business. It is reported that in the first three quarters, China Unicom's fixed-line main business revenue reached RMB 97.146 billion, an increase of 9.1% over the same period last year.

Digital and intelligent innovation development takes the lead, and new businesses become a new focus

It is worth noting that in the financial reports released by the three operators, words such as digitalization, innovative technology, and technological innovation appear very frequently. With the support of 5G, relying solely on traditional communication services can no longer meet the development strategies of operators. In recent years, the development of new businesses has gradually become a new driving force for the transformation and development of operators.

In the first three quarters of 2021, China Telecom's industrial digital business maintained rapid growth, with revenue reaching RMB 74.09 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16.8%, and its revenue scale and market share remained industry-leading. In the first three quarters, China Telecom's R&D expenses were 2.937 billion yuan, an increase of 29.7% over the same period last year. The main reason is that the company strengthened technological innovation, increased the introduction of high-tech talents, and strengthened the research and development of core technologies such as cloud-network integration and 5G. It is reported that China Telecom will take the A-share listing as an opportunity to deepen the "cloud-to-digital transformation" strategy, expand comprehensive intelligent information services with customers as the center, promote key technological breakthroughs and new generation technology reserves, build core capabilities for technological innovation, and seize the current important strategic opportunity period. Efforts to transform the development and growth mode and build a service-oriented, technology-oriented and security-oriented enterprise.

In the first three quarters, facing the complex challenges of the internal and external environment, China Mobile firmly grasped the opportunity of accelerating the development of the digital transformation of the economy and society, and in accordance with the overall deployment of the development strategy of creating a world-class "power building", the operating performance improved comprehensively, the leading position in the industry was consolidated, and high-quality development was maintained. In the last quarter, China Mobile will continue to follow the strategic deployment of creating a world-class "power building", promote digital transformation, achieve high-quality development, and thus achieve good growth in communication service revenue throughout the year.

In the field of innovative business, China Unicom takes digital innovation as the guide, deepens and thoroughly develops key industry application products, creates differentiated competitive advantages of 5G+ABCDE (artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, big data, edge computing) integrated innovation; builds an innovative business capability system, focuses on capability platformization, intensive R&D, product standardization, and autonomous integrated delivery, and builds independent capabilities to create unique innovative competitive advantages in the digital economy era. In the first three quarters of 2021, China Unicom's industrial Internet business revenue was RMB 40.925 billion, up 25.3% from the same period last year. In the future, China Unicom will fully release the endowment advantages of mixed-ownership reform and aggregation of industrial ecology, and lead in digital transformation. Through the dual-wheel drive of market and innovation, it will focus on improving the service capabilities of the new generation of information infrastructure construction, further improve the level of market-oriented operations, accelerate the pace of digital transformation, comprehensively create new advantages of differentiated development, and strive to achieve a new leap in high-quality development.