China Telecom reported a small decrease of 0.5 percent in first-quarter revenues, to CNY 91.53 billion, hurt by a sharp fall in handset sales. EBITDA increased 14.1 percent to CNY 30.24 billion, helped by the new accounting standards and lower operating costs, and net profit rose 4.5 percent to CNY 5.96 billion.
The operator said service revenues increased 4.1 percent to CNY 91.53 billion, driven by a growing customer base and usage, while terminal sales were down 48.5 percent year-on-year. China Telecom added a net 12.05 million new mobile customers in the quarter, for a total of 315.05 million, and fixed broadband customers rose by 2.08 million in the three months to 147.87 million.
Fixed voice lines fell by 1.31 million to 115.17 million at the end of March. Both mobile and fixed voice traffic were lower year-on-year, but mobile data traffic continued to grow strongly, up 140 percent year-on-year and reaching an average of nearly 7 GB per month for 4G users. Over 81 percent of mobile customers were using 4G, up from 78.4 percent a year ago.
