The three major telecommunications operators maintained revenue growth last year, with total planned dividends exceeding 130 billion yuan for the entire year.

证券日报 reporter Li Qiaoyu

On the evening of March 26, China Mobile Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “China Mobile”) released its 2025 annual report. By then, the 2025 annual reports of the three major telecom operators in China—China Mobile, China United Network Communications Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “China Unicom”), and China Telecom Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “China Telecom”)—had all been disclosed.

According to the announcement, in 2025, all three telecom operators achieved steady growth in operating revenue, and all decided to make large dividends. Among them, China Mobile plans to declare an approximately RMB 49.266 billion interim cash dividend for FY2025 year-end, with a total planned payout of approximately RMB 103.532 billion for the full year. China Telecom plans to pay a year-end dividend of RMB 8.309 billion, with a total full-year dividend of approximately RMB 24.890 billion; China Unicom plans to pay a year-end dividend of approximately RMB 1.635 billion, with a total full-year dividend of approximately RMB 5.112 billion. Based on this, the three major telecom operators plan to pay a total of RMB 59.21 billion in year-end dividends for FY2025, and over RMB 130 billion in total full-year dividends.

Boosting compute power investment

In 2025, China Mobile’s operating revenue was RMB 1,050.187 billion, up 0.9%; its total profit was RMB 175.608 billion, down 1.6% year over year; and its net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was RMB 137.095 billion, down 0.9% year over year. In 2025, China Telecom’s operating revenue was RMB 523.925 billion, up 0.1%; its total profit was RMB 42.68 billion, up 1.2%; and its net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was RMB 33.185 billion, up 0.5% year over year. In the same period, China Unicom’s operating revenue was RMB 392.223 billion, up 0.7%; its total profit was RMB 25.303 billion, up 0.8%; and its net profit attributable to the parent company was RMB 9.127 billion, up 1.1% year over year.

From specific business lines, the revenue structure of the three telecom operators continues to improve, with the share of emerging businesses continuing to rise.

The announcement shows that compute power services are an important growth engine for China Mobile’s high-quality development. In 2025, China Mobile’s data center revenue increased 8.7% year over year, including AIDC revenue up 35.4% year over year. Driven by the rapid growth in demand for intelligent computing, China Mobile’s intelligent computing services became the number-one engine, with a growth rate of 279%, pulling cloud computing services revenue up 13.9% year over year. In 2025, China Mobile’s compute power services revenue grew rapidly, reaching RMB 89.8 billion, up 11.1%.

In 2025, China Telecom’s strategic emerging industry business continued to maintain relatively fast growth. Tianyi Cloud revenue reached RMB 120.7 billion; the market share of public cloud IaaS rose to the second place in China, and the market share of IaaS+PaaS ranked among the top three in China. AIDC revenue reached RMB 34.5 billion; security revenue was RMB 16.6 billion; and intelligent revenue was RMB 12.3 billion. Revenue from video conferencing increased 31.2% year over year, quantum revenue increased 65.4% year over year, and satellite revenue increased 30.7% year over year.

In 2025, China Unicom’s share of revenue from strategic emerging industries exceeded 86%, the share of revenue from compute power businesses exceeded 15%, up 1.1 percentage points from the previous year; artificial intelligence revenue grew by more than 140% year over year; international business revenue was RMB 13.6 billion, up more than 9% year over year.

Executives related to the three operators all stated at the earnings briefing that in 2026 they will continue to step up compute power investment.

China Mobile Chairman Chen Zhongyue said that in 2025, China Mobile’s capital expenditures were RMB 150.9 billion, down 8.0% year over year. In 2026, China Mobile plans to keep its capital expenditures at around RMB 136.6 billion, down 9.5% year over year. Specifically, China Mobile’s capital expenditures for communication networks will be reduced by 20.3% to around RMB 79.2 billion; capital expenditures for the compute power network will increase 62.4% year over year to RMB 37.8 billion; and capital expenditures for intelligent networks will increase 19.8% year over year to RMB 8.9 billion.

China Telecom Chairman Ke Ruiwen said that in 2026, China Telecom will continue to optimize capital expenditures. Its full-year investment plan will be RMB 73.0 billion, of which compute power infrastructure investment will be RMB 25.5 billion, up 26% year over year, with the proportion of total investment rising to 35%.

China Unicom Chairman Dong Xin also said that in 2026, China Unicom will strictly control the amount of capital expenditures to around RMB 50 billion, with the proportion of compute power investment needing to exceed 35%. In the long term, the proportion of compute power investment in China Unicom’s capital expenditures will further increase.

Clarifying the next-step work targets

2026 is the opening year of the “15th Five-Year Plan” period. All three telecom operators have set out their work targets for the next steps in their 2025 annual reports.

Specifically, China Mobile’s communications services will ensure steady progress in revenue during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period; compute power services will strive to double their revenue by the end of the “15th Five-Year Plan”; and intelligent services will strive to double their revenue by the end of the “15th Five-Year Plan.” China Mobile aims to basically build a world-class technology services enterprise by 2030, fully build a world-class technology services enterprise by 2035, and become a global leading communications operator, compute power operator, and intelligent operator.

At the earnings briefing, Chen Zhongyue said that looking ahead, China Mobile will anchor its vision of becoming a “world-class technology services enterprise,” stay committed to its three core businesses—communications services, compute power services, and intelligent services—upholding network-strengthening foundations and full-stack innovation.

China Telecom said that in 2026, the company will seize strategic development opportunities, fully implement the Cloud-to-Digital-to-Intelligent strategy (“cloud改数转智惠”), and continuously deepen the “five-in-one” intelligent cloud system. With the goal of building a leading AI services provider, and with Token (vocabulary) services as the main line of business operation, it will strengthen original innovation and tackle key core technologies, build high-quality products and services for digital intelligence, and accelerate efforts to upgrade and build intelligent, comprehensive digital information infrastructure.

China Unicom said that in 2026, the company will focus on the core tracks of “connection,” “compute power,” “services,” and “security.” It will enhance the competitiveness of Unicom Cloud, accelerate the building of a compute power operating model of “intelligent agents + Token + AI cloud,” and speed up the overall upgrade to full intelligence of the cloud. It will also actively expand service innovation, concentrate efforts to build a second growth curve, and continue to promote large-scale development of cloud-smart products such as Unicom Cloud Disk, cloud-smart smartphones, Unicom Care for Home, Unicom Ultra-Clear, and ZhiJia TongTong, thereby driving innovation breakthroughs for Unicom’s intelligent agents.