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China Unicom H1 profits up on lower costs, broadband growth
2015-08-21 10:35:00| Telecompaper Headlines
(Telecompaper) China Unicom reported revenues for the first half of 2015 down 3.3 percent from a year earlier to CNY 144.69 billion. Services revenue fell 5.3 percent, with mobile revenues down 9.7 percent to CNY 73.46 billion and fixed revenues up 2.2 percent to CNY 46.19 billion. Unicom blamed the drop on the changes to VAT in China and changes to its sales and marketing model. The latter resulted in reduced handset subsidies and operating costs, helping EBITDA for the period increase 5.8 percent to CNY 50.46 billion. Net profit was up 4.5 percent to CNY 6.99 billion. The operator highlighted the focus on broadband services, with 3G and 4G now accounting for 71.8 percent of mobile service revenue, up from 66.9 percent a year ago. The number of mobile broadband subscribers increased by 8.68 million in the six months to 157.79 million at the end of June, equal to 54.5 percent of total mobile subscribers, up by 6.8 percentage points over the same period last year. Data usage by handset subscribers grew by 47.4 percent year-on-year, and the average monthly data traffic for mobile broadband customers was up 34.1 percent.
Tags: china
lower
costs
growth
Category:Telecommunications