On October 28, China Telecom announced the financial and operation data of the first three quarters in 2016.
In the first three equarters of the year, China Telecom's operation revenue reach CNY 263.816 billion, rising 7.1% YoY; its service revenue is CNY 233.494 billion with an increase of 5.6%; EBITDA falls by 0.6% to CNY 76.033 billion while net profit goes up by 7.2% to CNY 17.543 billion.
An addition of 14.59 million happens to its mobile subscribers which hit 212 million while its 4G device subscribers rise 49.03 million to 107 million. The total mobile traffic hits 833 kTB, marking a 127% growth YoY. Keeping growing rapidly, the average of 4G data traffic consumed per subscriber per month reaches 920 MB, while the ARPU for the three quarters slightly improves when compared year over year.
China Telecom has been continuously strengthening the development of fixed broadband services, especially FTTH. Its fixed broadband subscribers reach 121 million with a net increase of 7.66 million while FTTH subscribers reached 97.68 million, representing a net addition of 26.69 million and accounting for nearly 81% of the former. The overall data services of fixed network maintain a good growth and the fixed phone subscribers reduce by 5.03 million.
During the three quarters, the operation expense of China Telecom has increased 7.9% compared with the same period of 2015 while cost of network operation and support has grown 19.6%, which has been effectively controlled, except for the tower rents.