China Telecom booked profit growth in H1 despite a spike in capex, driven by gains in mobile and cloud.

Capex increased 13.5 per cent year-on-year to CNY47.1 billion ($6.6 billion).

In its earnings release, the operator explained it invested to strengthen its network and information security capabilities, improving risk monitoring and prevention.

Chair Ke Ruiwen added it continues to push its cloud and digital transformation strategy, with revenue from industrial digital services accounting for 30 per cent of service sales, up by nearly 4 percentage points in two years.

Net profit grew 8.2 per cent to CNY21.8 billion, aided by a CNY1.3 billion gain on the sale of assets, with operating revenue up 2.8 per cent to CNY268 billion.

Mobile services revenue rose 3.6 per cent to CNY105.2 billion.

ARPU was flat at CNY46.20.

Sales of goods dropped 11.8 per cent to CNY21.8 billion.

The operator stated 5G network subscriber penetration reached 54.5 per cent, without disclosing a user figure.

It added 41.7 million package subscribers to end June with 336.6 million.

Total mobile subscribers increased 3.7 per cent to 416.9 million.

Its cloud business revenue grew 20.4 per cent to CNY55.2 billion, accounting for 22.4 per cent of total service revenue.

IoT connections increased 27.9 per cent to 601.4 million.