Major operation during the reporting period
In 2021, the Company proactively explored the market, upgraded its products, enhanced its services and continued to meet individual and household customers’ demands emerging from consumption upgrade in digital life as well as enterprise customers’ demands emerging from transformation in Industrial Digitalisation. The Company spared no efforts to promote high-quality development. The Company’s operating revenues amounted to RMB439.6 billion, representing an increase of 11.7% year-on-year. Of which, service revenues amounted to RMB402.8 billion, representing an increase of 7.8% over last year. Excluding the revenue impact from the disposals of its subsidiaries the year-on-year growth rate reached 8.1%, remaining above the industry’s average growth rate for five consecutive years.
Continuing to strengthen the leading role of 5G services, with the scale and value of mobile subscribers maintaining favourable growth
The Company proactively seized the window of 5G service development and insisted on developing individual market led by 5G. The Company continued to enrich the content of 5G packages and took the lead in launching the 5G Cloud Package within the industry by leveraging its “cloud-network integration” edges, offering secure and reliable cloud services for 5G customers through “connectivity + cloud drive”. The Company also continuously optimised its content, applications and experience, stepped up the scale expansion of 5G applications, with the scale of applications such as Colour Ring back Tone with Video, Ultra HD, Cloud VR/AR, Cloud Games and cloud handsets becoming considerable while DOU continuing to rise. The Company continuously optimised its privilege operating system and provided customers with “more convenient, more preferential, more intelligent and more secure” digitalised privilege products and services. The Company offered better quality 5G network services to customers by optimising network configuration leveraging digital means and enhancing network coverage. In 2021, the Company’s mobile subscriber number reached 372 million, representing a net addition of 21.41 million and continuous increase in its market share. Mobile ARPU was RMB45.0, representing an increase of 2.0% year-on-year. The number of 5G package subscribers reached 188 million, with the penetration rate reaching 50.4% which maintained the industry-leading position. DOU of 5G network customers in December 2021 reached 24.1GB.
Continuing to accelerate the upgrade of household services, while steadily enhancing broadband servicing capabilities and blended ARPU
The Company proactively grasped the development trend of the digital economy, gave full play to its own resource endowment, continued to upgrade household business and services to continuously meet the integrated informatisation needs of household customers. The Company accelerated the comprehensive upgrade of broadband speed for household customers, with the penetration rate of gigabit users continuing to increase. The Company continued to leverage its first-mover advantage in Smart Family services, while continuing to optimise its services, enhance its product capabilities and accelerate the scale development of Smart Family products. The number of subscribers of e-Surfing Webcam and Whole-home WiFi maintained leading position in the industry. The Company proactively seized vantage point in digital life, accelerated the upgrade of Smart Family to whole-home intelligence, and provided family customers with customised services such as whole-home intelligent network and intelligent home. The Company accelerated the connected digital upgrade of household and public services, took the lead in the industry to publish a digital village white paper and continued to upgrade the functions of smart communities and digital village platforms to provide communities and rural customers with abundant digital services such as intelligent management, intelligent monitoring and intelligent security. In 2021, the number of broadband subscribers for the Company reached nearly 170 million, representing a net addition of 11.18 million, with broadband access ARPU recording a positive year-on-year growth. Revenues from Smart Family increased by 25.1%. Driven by Smart Family services, broadband blended ARPU amounted to RMB45.9, representing a year-on-year increase of 3.4%.
Expediting cloud-network integration to empower numerous walks of life, with the revenue of industrial digitalisation achieving rapid growth
Fully leveraging its edges in cloud-network integration, and the “integration of cloud, security, 5G, data, and intelligence”, the Company proactively empowered the transformation and upgrades of traditional industries. The Company also accelerated the enhancement of cloud product capabilities, with e-Surfing Cloud being upgraded to a distributed cloud. The Company created differentiated edges such as cloud-network integration, independence and controllability, localised service, security and reliability, so as to maintain a good market brand recognition and a leading position in the public cloud market for government administration. The Company accelerated the development of cloud-network integration products, launched a series of leading and pioneering products such as premium OTN dedicated lines, FIRST dedicated lines, and promoted the rapid growth of multi-cloud access, multi-cloud interconnection and DCI. The Company accelerated the enhancement of industry solution capabilities and delivery capabilities, continued to deepen the implementation of the government and enterprise system reform, further subdivided the industry BG and conducted in-depth research on demands of industry customers. The Company built nearly 30 group-level digital platforms for key industries, provided scene-based integrated intelligent solutions, and strengthened the integration and delivery team and capabilities at local level. Leveraging industry platforms, 5G customised networks and IoT, the Company extensively serves key areas and vertical industries such as smart cities, digital government and industrial Internet. In 2021, revenue from the Company’s Industrial Digitalisation reached RMB98.9 billion, representing an increase of 19.4% year-on-year on a comparable basis, a substantial growth acceleration compared to 2020. Revenue from e-Surfing Cloud continued to grow at a rapid pace, amounting to RMB27.9 billion, doubled year-on-year.
Accelerating digital transformation and upgrades, significantly enhancing digital sales and servicing capabilities
The Company proactively promoted digital transformation and upgrades and continuously enhanced the digital management level such as digital R&D and design, intelligent production and operation, integrated operation and management, agile customer service, and ecological product coordination. The Company continued to accelerate the construction of digital sales core to achieve rapid product loading, autonomous consumption, cross-region acceptance and processing and empower various online and offline touchpoints. The Company continued to promote the enhancement of data-based intelligent sales and marketing servicing capabilities, strengthened the application of data tags, and enhanced AI-driven and data-based intelligent sales and marketing capabilities to build accurate user profiles. As a result, the sales conversion rates, sales and marketing resource utilisation efficiency and customer perception were significantly enhanced. The Company sped up the upgrade of data-based intelligent servicing capabilities and built intelligent and online based customer servicing capabilities, achieving dual enhancement of service efficiency and customer perception. In 2021, the Company maintained the industry-leading position in overall satisfaction rate.
Continuing to accelerate the construction of new information infrastructure and further enhance cloud-network integration capabilities
Adhering to “Cloud Central, Network Around, Network Adaptive to Cloud, Cloud and Network as One”, the Company accelerated the construction of digital information infrastructure that is cloud-network integrated, green and low-carbon. The Company continued to strengthen 5G construction and deepened co-building and co-sharing. The number of 5G base stations in use reached approximately 690,000, while 5G network coverage extended to cover all cities and counties and certain developed towns nationwide. The Company built 5G customised networks through front- and back-ends linage and set the best practices for industry applications. The Company also deepened the promotion of fibre network construction and continued to enhance fibre network capabilities. The Company completed the construction of an all-fibre transmission ROADM network with nationwide coverage and the largest capacity in the world and expanded the scale deployment of the new metropolitan network to support business development. The Company strengthened the construction of cloud-network fundamental capabilities. Pivoting on the nation’s “East-to-West Computing Resource Transfer” project and the deployment of an integrated Big Data centre, the Company deployed datacentres, DCI network, computing power and e-Surfing Cloud on all fronts. The Company realised a “2+4+31+X+O” layout for its cloud resources and became the first cloud service provider in the country to achieve “one pool for each province”. The Company coordinated and deployed the largest cloud-based security capabilities pool within the industry and built the capabilities system for security situation awareness covering cloud, network, edge and terminal, to fortify the security foundation for its digital information infrastructure.