Author｜Yang Xi

Editor｜Wei Fanxi

The ongoing commercialization of computing services is propelling China's telecommunications sector into a new era of dynamic growth.

On May 17th, China Telecom pioneered the market by launching a suite of trial commercial token packages. These offerings cater to diverse customer segments including developers, small-to-medium enterprises, individual and family users, as well as ecosystem partners, establishing the company as the first major operator to standardize token services across its entire group.

Meanwhile, China Mobile and China Unicom have adopted a more regionalized approach, with their provincial branches rolling out token packages in select areas.

As of now, all three telecom behemoths have finalized their token business strategies, creating a vibrant new competitive landscape in the industry.

The initial market enthusiasm was palpable, with stock prices of the three operators surging post-announcement. On May 18th and 19th, China Telecom's shares closed up 7.74% and 4.40%, respectively. China Mobile saw increases of 2.43% and 0.65%, while China Unicom's stock rose by 5.58% and 0.61%, reflecting a buoyant market sentiment.

However, this euphoria was short-lived. Subsequently, the stock prices of all three operators began a downward trajectory. By May 22nd, China Telecom's shares had fallen to RMB 6.15, a 16.78% decline from their May 19th peak of RMB 7.39, with a total market capitalization of RMB 542.7 billion. China Mobile's stock price dropped to RMB 95.98, a 7.14% decrease from its peak of RMB 103.36, valuing the company at RMB 1,636 billion. China Unicom's shares fell to RMB 4.46, down 12.72% from their May 19th high of RMB 5.11, with a market cap of RMB 139.4 billion.

The initial hype, fueled by positive business developments, quickly dissipated as the capital market returned to a more rational valuation framework.

Challenges in Traditional Business Segments

Behind the operators' foray into the computing power sector lies the stark reality of stagnating growth in traditional voice and data services, coupled with a lack of revenue momentum.

By the end of 2025, China Telecom reported revenue of RMB 523.925 billion, a marginal 0.1% year-on-year increase; net profit attributable to shareholders stood at RMB 33.185 billion, up 0.5%. China Mobile achieved revenue of RMB 1,050.187 billion, a 0.9% year-on-year rise; however, net profit attributable to shareholders decreased by 0.9% to RMB 137.095 billion. China Unicom's revenue reached RMB 392.223 billion, a 0.7% increase; net profit attributable to shareholders grew by 1.1% to RMB 9.127 billion.

All three operators experienced revenue growth rates below 1%, marking the lowest levels in recent memory.

From a revenue composition perspective, in 2025, China Telecom's basic business revenue was RMB 330.5 billion, a 0.7% year-on-year increase. China Mobile's revenue from voice, messaging, wireless internet, and wired broadband services totaled RMB 606.896 billion, a 1.6% decline. China Unicom's revenue from voice calls, monthly fees, value-added services, and broadband and mobile data services amounted to RMB 203.405 billion, down 0.67%.

The data business, once a cornerstone of operator revenue, has long been mired in stagnant growth. Intensifying market competition has led operators to implement aggressive pricing strategies, including low-cost packages, unlimited data plans, and discounted rates, driving down the industry's average data pricing.

Simultaneously, traditional services like voice and messaging have been increasingly supplanted by social software, resulting in a shrinking revenue share and weakened contribution capacity.

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User per month), a key metric for operator profitability, reflects the average communication revenue generated per user. In 2025, China Telecom's mobile ARPU declined from RMB 46.2 in 2023 to RMB 45.1. China Mobile's mobile ARPU dropped from RMB 49.3 in 2023 to RMB 46.8. China Unicom reported a mobile ARPU of RMB 44.8 in 2023 but did not disclose the 2025 figure directly.

Overall, the mobile ARPU of all three operators exhibited a downward trend, underscoring the urgent need for industry transformation amid weak traditional business growth.

Pursuing Growth Opportunities

While traditional telecom businesses face sluggish growth, the rapid adoption of digital applications such as artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and cloud-based office solutions has fueled explosive demand for computing power nationwide, positioning the computing power economy as a core growth engine of the digital economy.

Against this backdrop, the three major operators are leveraging their core strengths in infrastructure, regulatory approvals, and vast user bases to enter the computing power sector, with token packages serving as the entry point, in pursuit of new growth avenues.

Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology reveals that as of March 2026, China's average daily token invocation volume exceeded 140 trillion, a more than 1,000-fold increase from the 100 billion at the beginning of 2024 and a 40% rise from the 100 trillion at the end of 2025.

This substantial growth in token invocation volume underscores China's rapid advancement in artificial intelligence development.

According to the same source, in 2025, China had established 42 intelligent computing clusters with over 10,000 cards, and its intelligent computing power scale surpassed 1,590 EFLOPS, ranking among the global leaders. Meanwhile, estimates from relevant institutions suggest that China was home to over 6,000 AI enterprises in 2025, with the core industry scale expected to exceed RMB 1.2 trillion.

The operators boast a solid foundation in computing power. By the end of 2025, the three major operators had 938,000 data center racks providing external services, with an additional 108,000 racks added in 2025. Their schedulable intelligent computing power scale exceeded 94.4 EFLOPS (exaFLOPS, FP16), an 87.6% year-on-year increase.

Financial report data for 2025 indicates that China Telecom's digital transformation service business revenue was RMB 147.307 billion, a 0.5% year-on-year increase, with AIDC (intelligent computing data center) revenue reaching RMB 34.5 billion. China Mobile's computing power service revenue reached RMB 89.8 billion, an 11.1% year-on-year rise, with intelligent computing service growth as high as 279%. China Unicom's AI revenue grew by more than 140% year-on-year, with computing power business revenue accounting for over 15%.

The operator tokens introduced this time are not virtual currencies but value links that connect electricity, computing power, data, and intelligent services. They transform idle platform computing power, network bandwidth, and cloud storage resources into standardized redeemable rights, revitalizing existing infrastructure, reducing operation and maintenance costs, enhancing user stickiness, increasing revenue per user, and aiding operators in achieving commercialization in the computing power economy.

Competition in the Computing Power Arena

The foundation of token packages lies in computing power, with the cloud serving as the core carrier for releasing this power. The "three clouds" of the three major operators are constructing exclusive computing power service foundations through differentiated development paths.

China Telecom's Tianyi Cloud maintains its leadership among operator clouds. In 2025, Tianyi Cloud's revenue reached RMB 120.7 billion, with its public cloud IaaS market share rising to second place in China and its IaaS+PaaS market share ranking among the top three domestically. China Telecom plans to invest RMB 25.5 billion in computing power infrastructure in 2026, a 26% year-on-year increase, with the proportion of total capital rising to 35%.

China Mobile's Mobile Cloud is rapidly closing the gap. In 2024, Mobile Cloud's revenue exceeded RMB 100 billion, reaching RMB 100.4 billion, a 20.4% year-on-year increase. An IDC report in May 2026 showed that Mobile Cloud ranked third in China's public cloud IaaS market for the first time with a 10.1% share.

China Unicom's Unicom Cloud, while the smallest, has demonstrated steady growth. In 2025, Unicom Cloud's revenue grew by 5.2% year-on-year, supporting the construction of over 180 provincial and municipal government clouds and enabling the digital transformation of nearly 400,000 enterprise customers.

However, beneath the surface of prosperity, concerns have arisen. In 2025, Tianyi Cloud's revenue growth rate dropped from 17.2% to 5.97%. Unicom Cloud's revenue growth rate declined from 34.5% in 2024 to 5.2%. Mobile Cloud's 2025 revenue figures were not disclosed.

In contrast to operator clouds are industry leaders such as Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and Huawei Cloud.

According to Gartner's 2025 global IaaS market share data, Alibaba Cloud's market share in China rose from 30.1% in 2024 to 32.8%, a significant 2.7 percentage point increase, maintaining its first-place position in the Chinese market. In March 2026, Alibaba officially established the Alibaba Token Hub (ATH) business group, creating a new organizational structure with the core goals of "creating tokens, delivering tokens, and applying tokens."

In the same month, Tencent Cloud took the lead in ending the "free trial" period for AI large models, significantly raising the prices of its Hunyuan series models, with some output prices increasing more than fivefold.

Huawei Cloud adopted a different strategy. Against the backdrop of industry-wide price hikes, Huawei Cloud bucked the trend by offering a long-term 30% discount on AI computing power. In 2025, Huawei Cloud's market share in China's public cloud IaaS market dropped from 13.2% in 2024 to 9.5%, being pushed out of the top three by Mobile Cloud, indicating a clear intention for strategic adjustment.

In the process of selling tokens, operators and internet giants play distinct roles.

Internet giants employ a locking strategy of "model supermarket + development tools + enterprise-level services," emphasizing platform ecosystems and high-value-added services.

Operators, lacking self-developed large models, still rely on third-party large models (such as DeepSeek, Qwen, MiniMax, etc.) to provide AI computing power services. Therefore, they must share a portion of their token revenue with model manufacturers and lag behind internet giants in product iteration speed and developer ecosystems.

Once, in the mobile internet era, the three major operators successfully transitioned their business focus from voice calls to data sales. As they enter the artificial intelligence era, their ability to once again switch tracks and transform into token sellers hinges on achieving comprehensive improvements in their core technologies, business models, and ecological capabilities.