The three major telecom operators showed their annual "report card"
author：China Electronic News
The three major telecom operators showed their annual "report card"
The three major telecom operators showed their annual "report card"
Recently, the three major operators have successively announced their annual operating data for 2023. On the other hand, operators continue to make efforts in infrastructure construction, taking into account the construction of computing infrastructure such as data centers on the basis of in-depth promotion of traditional 5G communication base stations, contributing to the digital transformation of industries and the development of emerging industries. Based on this, in 2023, carriers will make significant breakthroughs in emerging business areas such as cloud computing and big data, and cloud computing has become one of the three pillar businesses of operators.
In addition, operators are also actively deploying artificial intelligence in addition to traditional communication services to seize the opportunity of artificial intelligence. Feng Junlan, chief scientist of China Mobile Group, told China Electronics News: "Communication technology and information technology are deeply integrated, and tackling key problems in the field of artificial intelligence is the only way for operators. "To this end, operators have settled in the field of large models and are constantly trying to make new breakthroughs in vertical industries.
The growth of user scale is outstanding
According to the data released by the three operators, the number of mobile subscribers and the number of 5G package subscribers will show a rapid growth trend in 2023. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by the end of 2023, the total number of 5G package users in the country has exceeded 1.37 billion.
According to China Mobile data, in 2023, the cumulative net increase in the number of mobile users will be 15.994 million, and the cumulative net increase in the number of 5G package users will be 180.497 million, and China Unicom's "big connection" users will increase by 126.65 million in 2023, and the number of 5G package users will increase by 46.913 million, and the operating data released by China Telecom shows that in 2023, China Telecom will have a cumulative net increase of 16.59 million mobile users and a cumulative net increase of 50.7 million 5G package users.
The scale of IoT users is also accelerating. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the application of the Internet of Things in mainland China is still in the period of large-scale explosion: by the end of 2023, the total number of mobile network terminal connections in the mainland will reach 4.059 billion, of which the number of cellular IoT end users will reach 2.332 billion, accounting for 57.5% of the number of mobile terminal connections, a year-on-year increase of 26.4%. It is worth mentioning that in 2023, the number of cellular IoT users in mainland China will exceed the number of mobile phone users, and mobile network applications will show a distribution trend of more "things" than "people". As basic network providers, operators play an active role in the accelerated development of the Internet of Things. Taking the data disclosed by China Unicom as an example, in 2023, the cumulative number of Internet of Things terminal connections of China Unicom will reach 494 million, with a net increase of 108 million yuan for the whole year.
In terms of revenue, the 2023 Communications Industry Statistical Bulletin released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that in 2023, the cumulative revenue of telecommunications services will reach 1.68 trillion yuan, an increase of 6.2% over the previous year, and the total volume of telecommunications services will increase by 16.8% year-on-year at prices of the previous year. At the same time, the revenue of the Internet of Things business increased by 20.3% over the previous year.
Infrastructure construction builds a solid foundation for the industry
At present, the mainland has built the largest and most advanced 5G network, and the world's leading 5G development in the mainland has become an industry consensus. The reason for this is that the mainland's communication infrastructure is complete and the technology is leading, which has laid a solid foundation for the development of 5G.
In terms of communication infrastructure, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by the end of 2023, the total number of 5G base stations in mainland China will reach 3.377 million, compared with 2.312 million at the end of 2022, and the number of new base stations will exceed 1 million. It is understood that at present, the 5G network has covered all prefecture-level cities and counties in the mainland.
At the same time, as artificial intelligence has become a new outlet, the demand for computing power has skyrocketed, and the construction of computing infrastructure has also become a "must-answer question" for operators in 2023. Qian Depei, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out that computing power is not only the foundation of innovative national construction, but also a supporting technology, and the construction of computing infrastructure is imminent.
In this regard, the operator handed in a satisfactory "answer sheet".
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by the end of 2023, the number of Internet data center racks provided services to the public by the three basic telecom companies reached 970,000, a net increase of 152,000 for the whole year, and the net increase was nearly double that of the previous year. At present, the scale of public basic computing power that can be provided by the three major operators exceeds 26EFlops (trillion floating point operations per second).
In addition, driven by the 5G network, the construction of the industrial Internet has ushered in new development. Industry experts told reporters that 5G is the key technology driving the development of the industrial Internet, and the industrial Internet is the main position for the large-scale application of 5G. Gui Weihua, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out: "The industrial Internet is infrastructure, and its construction is the only way for industrial development. ”
As operators continue to expand the breadth and depth of 5G network convergence applications, 5G has been applied on a large scale in industries such as industry, mining, electric power, ports, and healthcare, and the development of "5G + Industrial Internet" has accelerated. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in 2023, 5G industry applications will be integrated into 71 major categories of the national economy, with more than 94,000 application cases and more than 29,000 5G industry virtual private networks.
Constantly try new businesses to achieve new breakthroughs
Carriers' main revenue businesses are concentrated in traditional services, such as voice calls, SMS, broadband, and data. In 2023, with the number of users rising across the board, operators' traditional services will run smoothly. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, operators' annual Internet broadband business revenue reached 262.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.7%, while their mobile data traffic business revenue reached 636.8 billion yuan, showing a slight decrease of 0.9%.
At the same time, under the trend of digital transformation, strategic emerging industries have become new business growth points for operators, and emerging services such as data centers, cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have become important pillars of operators' telecom services.
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in 2023, emerging businesses will complete a total of 356.4 billion yuan in business revenue, an increase of 19.1% over the previous year, and the proportion of telecom business revenue will increase from 19.4% in the previous year to 21.2%. Among them, the growth of cloud computing and big data business is particularly prominent, with an average annual growth rate of 37.5%.
It is worth mentioning that the development of emerging services is not only increasing the revenue of operators, but also continuously promoting the construction of the digital economy. Wu Hequan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said: "In 2023, the mainland's industrial digitalization revenue will exceed 50 trillion yuan, accounting for 40% of the mainland's total GDP. ”
In terms of cutting-edge technology research, operators will also perform well in 2023.
In the field of next-generation information technology development, operators have actively deployed the R&D, standardization, and application of 5G-A, 6G and other network technologies, and achieved remarkable results. In 2023, with the joint promotion of carriers, Huawei and other technology companies, the key 5G-A technology tests have been fully completed, and the 5G-A large-scale networking demonstration has been completed for the first time recently. ITU, 3GPP and other institutions said that 6G technology will enter the industrial research and development stage in 2030 and achieve commercial use.
In addition, in the field of artificial intelligence, especially in the field of large language models, the three operators are also actively deploying. Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, predicted: "In the next three years, the proportion of enterprises applying AI models in production and operation will increase from less than 5% to more than 80%. ”
It is self-evident how much importance operators attach to large models. The reporter learned that at present, by building a "1+N" large model system, operators plan to use a general large model to drive N vertical industry large models to realize the integrated application of large models and industrial industries. It is reported that at present, China Mobile's "Nine Days" model and China Telecom's "Xingchen" model have hundreds of billions of parameters.
