The Company fully grasped the opportunities arising from the digital transformation of the economy and society, proactively explored new scenes, new business formats and new models, and continuously upgraded the digital innovative applications for 2C/2H/2B/2G customers. The Company accelerated the integrated development of fundamental businesses and strategic emerging businesses, achieving new results in corporate development.

In 2023, the Company’s operating revenues amounted to RMB513.6 billion, representing an increase of 6.7% year-on-year. Of which, service revenues amounted to RMB465.0 billion, representing an increase of 6.9% year-on-year, maintaining favourable growth for 11 consecutive years.

The Company deeply understood the needs of users in the digital era, comprehensively built 5G superior network, and continuously enhanced 5G network coverage and service quality. The Company accelerated the brand-new upgrades of 5G, continuously enhanced customer experience, and steadily increased the scale and value of mobile subscribers.

The Company accelerated the creation of differentiated advantages in 5G communications and connectivity. The Company launched innovative and featured applications such as 5G Mobile Phones with Direct Satellites Connection and 5G Quantum-encrypted Calls, and strengthened the promotion of applications such as 5G Enhanced Calls and 5G Message to provide users with more secure and more versatile voice calls and text messaging services.

The Company accelerated the integration and innovation of 5G with computing power and AI. The Company continued to promote the scale development of computing power products such as 5G Cloud Computers, and continuously promoted the intelligent upgrade of applications such as 5G Communications Assistant and Colour Ringback Tone with Video to meet more expectations from users for personalised, diversified and quality information services.

In 2023, the Company’s mobile communications service revenues reached RMB195.7 billion, representing an increase of 2.4% year-on-year. Of which revenue from mobile value-added and application services reached RMB25.8 billion, representing an increase of 12.4% year-on-year. The net addition of mobile subscribers was 16.59 million, maintaining the industry-leading position for six consecutive years, and bringing the total number of subscribers to 408 million. Mobile ARPU reached RMB45.4, representing an increase of 0.4% year-on-year.

The Company proactively followed the new trend of digital life development, relied on its resource endowment, edges and characteristics such as cloud-network integration, and continued to promote the enhancement of capabilities of Gigabit network and scale penetration. The Company strengthened the expansion of Smart Family applications and service upgrades, deepened the integration and mutual promotion of digital platforms such as smart community and digital village, and continued to enhance user perception, resulting in a steady increase in broadband revenue, subscriber scale and blended ARPU.

The Company continuously accelerated the development of Gigabit fibre network. The Company accelerated Gigabit customers’ upgrade to FTTR and created the ultimate experience of family networking by providing high-quality fibre network with full coverage and increased speed, so as to consolidate the digital infrastructure for Smart Family and meet family users’ demands for access with larger bandwidth, greater connectivity and lower latency. The Company continuously upgraded new applications for Smart Family. Based on cloud-network integration, the Company further enriched cloud broadband applications such as Cloud Storage, Cloud Playback and Cloud Video, sped up the promotion of family AI and security products such as e-Surfing Webcam and Smart Smoke Detection, and further upgraded applications and services of Whole-home Intelligence. The Company continuously deepened the integration and mutual promotion of digital platforms such as smart community and digital village. The Company further promoted the capabilities enhancement of digital platforms such as smart community and digital village. By accelerated addition of applications and services of platforms such as subdistrict cloud and town cloud, convenient living circles, as well as elderly and child care, the Company promoted the integration and mutual promotion of multiple scenes such as rural and community management, community services and family applications to drive the scale development and value enhancement of fundamental businesses. In 2023, the Company’s Wireline and Smart Family service revenues amounted to RMB123.1 billion, representing an increase of 3.8% over last year. Of which, revenue from Smart Family business amounted to RMB19.0 billion, representing an increase of 12.8% year-on-year. The number of broadband subscribers reached 190 million with a net addition of 9.26 million. Broadband blended ARPU reached RMB47.6, representing an increase of 2.8% year-on-year.

With deepened development of the new round of sci-tech revolution and industrial transformation, the Company proactively grasped customers’ growing demands for digitalisation, intelligence, greenness and security, and fully completed deployment in seven strategic emerging industries, including cloud computing and computing power, AI, security, digital platform, Big Data, quantum and new generation information and communications. The Company obtained leading advantages in cloud, quantum, satellites and other fields, while it further consolidated its foundations in fields such as security, AI and Big Data, boasting huge potential in the future. Based on its advantages of cloud-network integration, customer resources and localised services, the Company further strengthened its service capabilities for industry customers, achieving dual leadership in terms of scale and capabilities of digital platforms in key industries, as well as high-quality development of Industrial Digitalisation business.

The cloud computing and intelligent computing power continued to upgrade. The Company developed China Telecom Cloud as the source of original cloud computing technologies with high quality and made constant breakthroughs in key technologies. With its proprietary cloud operating system TeleCloudOS 4.0 as the core, the Company has fostered a full-stack cloud technologies and products system that is technologically advanced, independent and controllable, building a cloud foundation that features multi-chip architecture in one cloud, polymorphism and multi-type computing in one cloud. China Telecom Cloud served thousands of industries for cloud migration and the use of cloud, ranking among the top in the market, with China Telecom Cloud being the framework of national cloud fully taking shape. Focusing on new requirements to cloud service providers in the era of large models, China Telecom Cloud has fully upgraded to an intelligent cloud. The Company developed “Yunxiao”, an intelligent computing acceleration platform integrating cloud, intelligent computing and supercomputing, providing the supreme computing power and highly-efficient operation and maintenance tools adapting to AI use cases. The Company also launched “Huiju”, a one-stop intelligent computing service platform, providing large model developers with a training and inferencing tool chain that is one-stop, fully linked, low-threshold and highly secured. The Company upgraded “Xirang”, a computing power distribution network platform, to fully support the unified access, packaging and scheduling of general computing, intelligent computing, and supercomputing, providing computing power operators with computing power connection and trading services. This has facilitated better utilisation of computing power resources, the realisation of computing power inclusion, the efficiency enhancement of computing power supply and the interconnection of computing power from multiple parties. The Company carried out R&D of “Zhenshi 3.0 engine”, a new-generation image and streaming fusion algorithm, driving the growth of cloud computer users by more than two times year-on-year, ranking first in China’s DaaS market, with a market share of nearly 40%. China Telecom Cloud maintained its leading market positions, including the No.1 ranking in government and administration public cloud infrastructure and the No. 1 ranking in the global telco cloud. China Telecom Cloud was the only one among the top three players in the domestic public cloud IaaS and IaaS+PaaS market to have achieved continuous growth in market share. In 2023, revenue from China Telecom Cloud amounted to RMB97.2 billion, representing an increase of 67.9% year-on-year.

The R&D and application launch of AI and Big Data technologies were continuously strengthened. In terms of AI, the Company created the “1+N+M” Xingchen large models product portfolio and established the base for the general-purpose large foundation model, covering four major capabilities including language, speech, visual and multimodal capabilities, while achieving open source. The Company rolled out 12 large vertical models in vertical fields such as government administration, education and transportation, while empowering more than 600 projects for use cases such as grassroots governance, smart customer service and smart city. The Company released “Xingchen MaaS platform”, providing customers with services such as one-stop large model R&D and applications including computing power, algorithms, data and tools. The Company launched 9 large models for its own use focusing on internal production and operation including network operation, operational analysis and code R&D to help itself realise operation digitalisation, business digitalisation and management digitalisation. In terms of deployment in the data element market, the Company released the “Lingze data elements 2.0 platform” to provide data trading service covering the whole business process. The Company built the benchmark project of “data product supermarket”, supporting the aggregation, development and trading of data resources in various regions, and helping thousands of industries accelerate the transformation and upgrades of business digitalisation, operation digitalisation and management digitalisation.

Further elevated the level of integrated security protection capabilities by “forging shields with quantum”. The Company continued to build an integrated end-to-end collaborative security protection system. It has developed security capabilities and services in 7 major categories and more than 50 subdivisions around key products such as Anti-DDoS Cloud Dam and Security Brain. Its Anti-DDoS Cloud Dam maintained the No. 1 ranking in terms of market share in China and was included in Gartner’s list of global top service providers selection. The Company built the industry’s first managed security service platform at the operator level, creating an “O2O” integrated managed security service model featuring “cloud operation experts + localised services”. The Company intensified its efforts in achieving breakthroughs of original technologies in the field of quantum. Its quantum computing cloud platform, “Tianyan”, achieved super fusion. The Company built quantum communications infrastructure at the municipal level with “quantum-network integration”, providing industry customers with security services such as information transmission and data storage. The Company strengthened professional consolidation and forward-looking deployment in the field of quantum technology, initiated the acquisition of Quantumctek Co., Ltd., strengthened breakthroughs in technological and application innovation, and expanded the space for quantum business development.

5G industry applications continued to be optimised and strengthened. Driven by the “cloud-, network-, AI- and security-integrated” initiatives, the Company leveraged exclusive networks, nearby storage, and the new architecture of edge distribution to achieve the instant access to cloud for data traffic of 5G applications. The Company carried out proprietary R&D of intelligent applications such as 5G AI quality inspection and 5G data collection and control. The Company built the industry’s first proprietary customer self-service operation platform for 5G customised networks and created industry-leading scene-based customised network solutions. The number of new projects of 5G industry applications in the year increased by 106.3% year-on-year, bringing the aggregate number to exceed 31,000.

Effectively empowering customers’ digital transformation and upgrades with digital platforms. The Company further intensified its efforts in technological R&D and function iteration of digital platforms and developed more than 110 key digital platforms to empower the digital transformation and upgrades at scale for customers from fields such as government administration, enterprises, education, healthcare and finance. In the field of digital government administration, the Company strengthened technological empowerment and product integration and innovation services, continued to provide and upgrade resources pools and platforms of China Telecom government administration cloud, and has already provided more than 20 provinces and over 220 cities with various integrated applications such as access to services via a single website, management via a single website, collaboration via a single website as well as urban operation, management and services. In the field of new industrialisation, the Company provided network-based connectivity for various enterprises through 5G definitive network and proprietary industrial PON. In terms of intelligent transformation, the Company built a unified database for industrial protocols and statutes and achieved scale application of its proprietary e Cloud Collection terminals in 15 industries, realising real-time and accurate collection of production data. At the same time, leveraging its proprietary e Cloud Control platform, the Company vigorously promoted cloud-based decoupling and the application of AI for PLC, and has launched 12 use cases for industries such as tobacco and steel, achieving unified control among equipment. In the field of healthcare, the Company assisted the health committees at all levels to build the universal health information platform and the close-type county-level medical community to realise the interconnection of regional healthcare data, with a coverage of 25 provinces. In many other fields such as education, transportation and logistics, culture and tourism, smart community, and digital village, the Company continued to build and deepen the application capabilities of industry-specific platforms.

In 2023, the Company’s Industrial Digitalisation business maintained rapid growth, with its revenue reaching RMB138.9 billion, representing an increase of 17.9% year-on-year and accounting for 29.9% of service revenues, up by 2.8 p.p. over last year. Its incremental contribution to service revenues increased to 70.4% from 51.6% in 2021.

The Company deeply implemented the people-centred development philosophy, focused on the common concerns of users, and took “focusing on digital upgrades and enhancing customer perception” as the mainline, continuously enhanced digital and intelligent service capabilities, with customer perception reaching a new level.

The Company accelerated the optimisation of network service quality. Focusing on popular scenes, business applications and in-depth network coverage, the Company improved the network quality as well as perception and experience of the “ten key scenes”. In 2023, the Company’s mobile network quality and broadband network quality satisfaction continued to improve.

The Company accelerated the strengthening of channel service capabilities. Focusing on the frequently used scenes by users, the Company accelerated the building of online handling and cross-region handling capabilities such as cross-province addition of mobile service, cross-province addition of broadband service, main and supplementary card splitting and card replacement, and realised online handling for all common services nationwide. The number of user-times served via video by “remote counter” exceeded 8.60 million, and the proportion of service volume of China Telecom App increased by 7 p.p. year-on-year.

The Company accelerated the innovation of marketing service model. Relying on innovative means such as Big Data and AI algorithms and digital service tools, the Company explored new marketing service models such as live streaming and micro stores and loaded smart voice, digital human, robots and other online service scenes. The Company carried out 37,000 live streaming sessions such as marketing, service and public welfare, with the total number of online users exceeding a hundred million, and the proportion of AI smart customer service increased by 12.6 p.p. year-on-year.