China Unicom trimmed its capex in the first half of 2024 as its 5G base station count topped 2 million, with the operator registering an eighth consecutive year of double-digit profit growth.

Capex for the first six months fell 13.4 per cent to CNY23.9 billion ($3.3 billion), with the full-year outlay forecast to drop 12 per cent to CNY65 billion.

The operator claimed it deployed commercial 5G-Advanced technology in more than 100 cities and ended H1 with a total of 2.1 million 5G base stations.

Net profit grew 11.3 per cent year-on-year to CNY13.8 billion. Operating revenue rose 2.9 per cent to CNY197.3 billion, with service revenue up 2.7 per cent to CNY175.7 billion.

The number of 5G package subscribers increased 19 per cent to 276.2 million at end-June. The operator added more than 6 million mobile subs from a year earlier, a five-year high, to close June with 339.4 million. This makes it the world’s fifth-largest (and China’s third biggest) operator, according to GSMA Intelligence.

Average monthly data usage increased 16 per cent to 16GB.

Cloud revenue improved 24.3 per cent to CNY3.7 billion; data service revenue was up 8.6 per cent to CNY3.2 billion.

IoT connections grew 27 per cent to 562.4 million.