China Telecom Corporation Limited

News Summary:

China Telecom, along with China Mobile and China Unicom, made billable artificial intelligence (AI) tokens a key focus of their growth strategies, highlighting AI and computing operations as major revenue drivers in their first-half financial disclosures released in August 2026, presenting token usage as a central metric amid accelerating AI adoption and soaring computing demand. This focus on AI follows its offensive in the field during the first half of 2026, which, coupled with increased research and development spending, supported its cloud revenue activities. Earlier on August 20, the company reported a 14.9 percent year-on-year drop in net profit to 19.59 billion yuan (HK$22.86 billion) for the first six months of 2026, leading it to declare an interim dividend of 16.06 fen, an 11.4 percent decrease from the previous year. Also on August 20, China Telecom announced that its 5G network subscribers reached 323 million in the second quarter of 2026, with a net increase of 8.37 million users, a slowdown from the 12.32 million net increase recorded in the first quarter. Its total mobile subscribers reached 442 million, with a net increase of 1.88 million during the quarter. Previously, on August 18, China Telecom led a new funding round for Mifeng Technology (Maniformer), a one-stop physical AI data service platform, which raised hundreds of millions of yuan with participation from Zhangjiang Group and increased investment from existing shareholders.