China Telecom chair and CEO Ke Ruiwen hailed power reduction initiatives using new AI capabilities to make base stations more efficient, claiming annualised energy savings of about 1.1 billion kWh.

In its H1 earnings release, Ke noted the AI programme covered about 6 million base stations and 3,400 facility rooms. He added green developments across the company drove a double-digit decrease in carbon emissions per unit of total volume of telecoms services provided.

Net profit rose 5.5 per cent year-on-year to CNY23 billion ($3.2 billion).

Operating revenue increased 1.3 per cent to CNY271.5 billion, with mobile service revenue up by the same percentage to CNY106.6 billion. ARPU was flat at CNY46.

Its 5G user base grew by 31.5 million to 282 million.

In Q1, the operator switched to reporting 5G network subscribers (those with compatible handsets and plans) from package subscribers (customers with a plan, but not necessarily a compatible handset), making a year-on-year comparison impossible.

Total mobile users rose 3.7 per cent to 432.7 million.

Ke said it had deployed 100,000 5G-Advanced base stations across China and 600,000 reduced capability sites in more than 300 cities, taking the total 5G count to 2.3 million across low-, medium- and high-band frequencies.

Industrial digitalisation service revenue increased 1.5 per cent to CNY74.9 billion, with security business sales growing 18.2 per cent to CNY9.1 billion.

AI and computing services sales increased 89.4 million to CNY6.3 billion.

Capex declined 27.4 per cent to CNY34.2 billion.