China Mobile service revenue up 6.7% in 2016

China Mobile has recorded a five-year high growth in service revenue growth for 2016, due to strong mobile data revenue growth.

Operating revenue for the year grew 6% to 708.42 billion yuan ($102.7 billion), with service revenue up 6.7% to 623.42 billion yuan.

During the year, wireless data traffic became China Mobile’s single largest revenue source for the first time, after growing by 43.5% to account for 46.2% of total service revenue.

Net profit grew a slim 0.2% to 108.74 billion yuan ($15.78 billion), but excluding the gains from the disposal of tower assets to telecommunications infrastructure sharing joint venture China Tower in the prior year, profit would have grown 10.5%.

China Mobile added 223 million 4G customers throughout the year, bringing its total 4G base to 535 million and representing a penetration rate of 63%. The company also added 400,000 4G base stations to its network, taking its total population coverage to more than 1.3 billion.

The operator’s total mobile customer base grew 2.7% from 2015 to 848.9 million.

On the fixed line front, China Mobile added 22.59 million broadband customers, taking the total to 77.62 million, with 76.9% of these subscribed to services with speeds of at least 20Mbps.

China Mobile is the last of China’s big three operators to report its results for 2016. China Mobile’s performance compares to a 6.4% increase in operating revenue and 10.2% decline in net profit for China Telecom, as well as a 94.1% slump in net profit and 1% decrease in operating revenue for China Unicom.