China Tower ends H1 with 2.07mn towers

China Tower added a total of 9,000 sites during the first half of 2024

China Tower ended the first half of the 2024 with a total of 2.07 million towers under management, after a new addition of 9,000 sites during the period.

In a release, the company said that total tower tenants rose by 84,000 to 3.73 million, pushing the average number per tower from 1.77 as of the end of H1 2023 to 1.80 at end-H1 2024.

China Tower’s net profit in H1 climbed 10.1% year-on-year to CNY5.33 billion ($742 million), while operating revenue grew 3.8% to CNY48.24 billion.

“Smart tower” revenue amounted to CNY3.98 billion in the first half of the year, climbing 17.6% year-on-year, while sales from the company’s energy unit increased 2.4% year-on-year to CNY2.02 billion.

Tower business revenue grew by 1.3% to CNY37.95 billion, while indoor distributed antenna system (DAS) sales increased by 21.6% to CNY4.16 billion.

China Tower’s DAS business covered buildings with a cumulative area of 11,540 million square meters as of the end of June, up by 30.8% from the same period last year.

“We set up six scientific and technological innovation centers focusing on specific fields such as 5G/6G, IoT and edge computing. These facilities contributed to accelerating the building of innovation highlands that integrate product R&D, achievements transformation, industry incubation, and talent cultivation,” the company said.

“We continuously expanded the ecosystem of technological innovation, gathering high-quality innovation resources to carry out cooperation on integration and innovation. We also constantly expanded innovation cooperation with key tertiary institutions, scientific research institutions, and technology companies in the fields of AI, 5G/6G, edge computing, energy saving and carbon reduction, and network information security,” China Tower added.

China Tower was formed in 2014, when the country’s mobile carrier China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom transferred their telecom towers to the new company. The three telcos decided to create the new entity in a move to reduce redundant construction of telecommunications infrastructure across the country. China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom currently own a 38%, 28.1% and 27.9% stake respectively. State-owned asset manager China Reform Holding owns the remaining 6%.

Chinese mobile operators had deployed a total of 3.92 million 5G base stations by the end of June, according to the latest available data from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The ministry reported that Chinese telcos had installed a total of 540,000 5G base stations in the first half of the year.

Also, 5G base stations accounted for 33% of the total number of mobile base stations nationwide, according to the official data.

The report also noted that the number of 5G mobile subscribers in China increased by 105 million from the end of 2024 to reach 927 million as of the end of June. This figure accounted for 52.4% of the total mobile subscribers in China’s major telecommunication operators China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Broadnet, which stood at nearly 1.78 billion by the end of June, according to the report.