China's telecom sector sees rebound in Q1 revenue

China's telecommunications industry saw a rebound in revenue in the first quarter of 2020, official data showed on Tuesday.

The sector's revenue totaled 338.3 billion yuan (47.8 billion U.S. dollars), an increase of 1.8 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

In breakdown, revenue from fixed-line communications of the three telecom giants, China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom, totaled 115.9 billion yuan (16.4 billion U.S. dollars) in the period, up by 9.8 percent from one year earlier. The mobile communications business reported revenue of 222.4 billion yuan (31.5 billion U.S. dollars), down by 1.9 percent year on year, a decrease of one percentage point from the end of 2019, making up for 65.7 percent of the total telecommunications business revenue.

During the coronavirus epidemic, mobile internet traffic still maintained rapid growth. In the first quarter, cumulative mobile internet traffic reached 35.7 billion GB, a year-on-year increase of 39.3 percent. Among them, the flow of internet access via mobile phones reached 34.4 billion GB, a year-on-year increase of 34.9 percent, accounting for 96.4 percent of the total.

In March, the average mobile internet access traffic per household went up by 30.6 percent to reach 9.5GB, a surge of 0.91GB from December of the previous year, reaching the highest point in nearly 12 months.

The epidemic has greatly promoted the smart industry and the online economy. Data showed that as of March, the country's three major telecommunications operators had developed 1.078 billion end-users of cellular IoT, a year-on-year increase of 49.4 percent and a net increase of 50.67 million from the end of 2019.