China added 20 million 5G subs last month

To put that in context, that's not far off the total number of 5G subscribers in nearby Japan, according to the latest data from the European 5G Observatory.

Of the three, China Mobile is still the only one to report actual customers using its 5G network; China Telecom and China Unicom are sticking to their 5G package subscribers metric, which essentially means customers signed up to a 5G plan, regardless of whether they use 5G network services. But given that China Mobile dwarfs its two rivals, both in absolute terms and from a growth perspective, the latest statistics still give us a decent picture of the market.

China Mobile's July net adds came in at 13.7 million, pushing its 5G customer base up to a colossal 528 million.

Smaller rivals China Unicom and China Telecom added 2.9 million and 3.1 million 5G package customers respectively, giving them 5G bases of 279 million and 340 million. While monthly 5G net adds in the million are not to be sneezed at, clearly they are failing to attract 5G customers at the same rate as the market leader.

Interestingly, there was a distinct lack of 5G commentary in China Telecom's half yearly report; it is the last of the three to post numbers and did so alongside the publication of the market's operational statistics for July.

The telco shared its 5G package figures – it added almost 18 million in the first six months of 2024, incidentally – but made no other reference to the technology in a fairly wordy statement about its year-to-date performance.

Instead, the operator focused on the progress of its digital transformation strategy, leaning heavily on the promise of artificial intelligence. Specifically, China Telecom is talking up what it terms AI+ – there's always one – and the Xingchen large language model it launched at the back end of last year.

"The Company strengthened the integration and mutual promotion of capabilities in various fields, continuously enriched the Xingchen large model series product portfolio, empowered the intelligent transformation for thousands of industries, and supported enterprises to achieve costs reduction and efficiency enhancement," it said.

Essentially, that just tells us what we already knew: that China Telecom is pushing hard on AI and wants everyone to know about it. The same can be said of its domestic peers too, but they also included a bit more information on 5G development in their 1H reports, published earlier this month.

For example, China Unicom shared details of its 5G network build-out, pointing out that its 5G mid-band base stations numbered in excess of 1.31 million as of mid-year, while low-band sites reached 780,000. And China Mobile disclosed that it has 129 million customers using its 5G New Calling over high-definition video service reached 129 million, of which, smart application subscribers numbered 11.82 million.

China Telecom's silence on 5G is a little unusual, but arguably nothing to get excited about. Its financial figures show stronger year-on-year revenue growth in 1H than its rivals and while its mobile ARPU is lower than that of China Mobile by the best part of 5 yuan (about 70 US cents) at CNY46.3, it recorded slight growth, while the larger company booked a decline.

Doubtless we'll hear more about 5G from China Telecom when it has something to crow about.