MIIT Announces April 2013 Telecom Statistics
MIIT, 5/17/13
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has released its January to April 2013 telecom industry statistics. The figures for the four months were as follows:
Telecom operating revenues for Jan-Apr 2013 were RMB 423.20 bln (USD 68.48 bln), up 11.5% YoY, among which, core services revenue was RMB 369.24 bln (USD 59.75 bln), up 8.8% YoY. Broken down by mobile and fixed-line core service revenue, mobile telecom revenue was RMB 272.58 bln, up 10.4% YoY; and fixed-line telecom revenue was RMB 96.66 bln, up 4.6% YoY, of which broadband revenue was RMB 41.31 bln, up 7.7% YoY.
Of total telecom core services revenue, non-voice revenue was RMB 196.39 bln, up 16.7% YoY. Voice revenue was RMB 172.85 bln, up 1.1% YoY, of which mobile voice revenue was RMB 153.85 bln, up 2.8% YoY, and fixed-line voice revenue was RMB 19.01 bln, down 10.7% YoY. Mobile data and internet revenue was RMB 54.47 bln, up 56.8% YoY.
Year-to-date capital expenditure came to RMB 65.25 bln (USD 10.56 bln), a 1.1% year-on-year decrease.
Total telephone subscribers saw a net increase of 8.19 mln in April to reach 1.430 bln. Mobile subscribers grew by 9.40 mln to 1.155 bln, while fixed-line subscribers decreased by 1.21 mln to 275.19 mln. Broken down by traditional fixed-line and PHS, the traditional (i.e. non-PHS) fixed-line subscriber base declined by 847,000 to 264.17 mln, while the PHS subscriber base decreased by 366,000 subs to 11.02 mln. In April, 11.48 mln new 3G subscribers were added to reach a total 3G user base of 288.74 mln.
A total of 308.83 bln SMS messages were sent from January to April, a 2.3% increase YoY.
In terms of Internet access, China added 1.36 mln new registered broadband users in April to reach a total of 177.88 mln. 4M and higher broadband subs reached 124.65 mln, accounting for 70.1% of all broadband subs. FTTH subs grew to 26.42 mln, accounting for 14.9% of all broadband subs. Dial-up internet subs declined by 59,000 in April, reducing the total dial-up user base to 5.63 mln. Mobile Internet subscribers decreased by 9.74 mln in April to reach a total of 807.65 mln.
A number of new mobile internet applications released in the past two years have begun to affect traditional mobile value added service usage, such as SMS, MMS, ringtone and mobile newspaper revenue. SMS users decreased by 9.72 mln during the month to reach a mobile user penetration rate of 67.5%, as compared to 73.7% in April 2012. P2P SMS usage volume fell 10.9% YoY during the month, while MMS and mobile newspaper penetration fell 7.2 and 3.7 percentage points as compared to the previous year.
Editor's Note: To be comparable with other telecom operators, China Unicom adjusted the computation basis of "Broadband Subscribers" from March 2013 as follows: including Internet leased line users and not applying LAN user account conversion. This adjustment led to a decrease of broadband subscribers in MIIT’s April Telecom statistics. For more background on this topic, please see "China Unicom Announces March 2013 Subscriber Totals," MD 4/19/13 issue.
Keywords: national statistics voice services Internet mobile data penetration revenue telecom users MIIT MMS mobile subscribers SMS 3G fixed-line subscribers mobile Internet telephone subscribers ringtone WVAS mobile paper broadband subscribers dial-up
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