(Yicai Global) Aug. 17 -- Net profit at China’s three biggest telecoms operator, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom, reached CNY93.4 billion (USD13.8 billion) in the first half of the year. Their total revenue was CNY913.4 billion (USD134.9 billion).

China Mobile and China Unicom’s net profits soared 18.9 percent and 19.5 percent to HKD70.3 billion (USD9 billion) and CNY11 billion, respectively, in the six months ended June 30 from a year earlier, while that of China Telecom rose 3.1 percent to CNY18.3 billion, according to the latest financial results the three firms released recently.

Revenue at China Mobile was CNY496.9 billion in the first half, up 12 percent from the same period a year ago. China Telecom’s revenue increased 11 percent to CNY242.2 billion, and that of China Unicom rose 7.4 percent to CNY176.3 billion.

Fifth-generation network data plan subscribers expanded to 928 million thanks to the broader coverage of the three carriers' 5G network. China Mobile had 511 million such subscribers, followed by China Telecom with 232 million and China Unicom with 185 million.

China Mobile invested CNY58.7 billion on 5G-related fields in the first half, opening one million-level 5G base stations, including 300,000 in the 700 megahertz band, it said in the earnings report.

China Telecom and China Unicom co-built 180,000 new 5G base stations in the period to reach a total of 870,000. The pair also cooperated to build a fourth-generation network. Such partnership saved the partners CNY240 billion worth of investments, China Telecom said in its first-half financial report.

The domestic telecoms sector's income rose 8.3 percent to CNY815.8 billion in the first half from a year earlier, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed last month.

As of the end of June, 563 million users had fixed broadband access to the three carriers' networks, with 1.7 billion mobile subscribers, the MIIT's data showed. Mobile internet traffic totaled 124.1 billion gigabytes, up 20.2 percent from the same period a year ago. Income from internet data centers, big data, cloud computing, and other emerging businesses increased 36.3 percent to CNY162.4 billion.

Editor: Futura Costaglione