China's 5G mobile subscriptions top 70% of total

BEIJING -- China continued to expand its 5G network this year, with 5G mobile phone subscriptions reaching 1.3 billion by the end of July, or 70.5 percent of the country's total mobile phone subscriptions, official data showed Friday.

The country's three major telecom operators and China Broadnet had a combined 1.85 billion mobile phone subscriptions by the end of July, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The construction of new-type infrastructure advanced steadily in the first seven months of the year. The number of 5G base stations reached 5.15 million by the end of July, a net increase of 316,000 from the end of last year.

Mobile internet traffic grew rapidly during the period, reaching 258.7 billion gigabytes, up 17.6 percent year-on-year.

Mobile Internet of Things (IoT) terminal users of the three major telecom operators totaled 2.99 billion by the end of July, up 105 million from the end of last year.

Fixed broadband users continued to shift toward gigabit services. The three major telecom operators had 702 million fixed broadband subscribers by the end of July. Of the total, 260 million were gigabit broadband users, accounting for 37.1 percent, up 2.6 percentage points from the end of last year.

China has established the world's largest information infrastructure. Gigabit optical network access is available in every county, while 5G networks covers all towns and more than 95 percent of administrative villages.

The country is pushing ahead with its Digital China initiative, aiming to raise the added value of the core industries of the digital economy to 12.5 percent of GDP by 2030, according to the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30).