China Telecom, the smallest mobile carrier in China, is setting its sights on mid- to high-end segments in order to sign up more high-value customers.
Speaking at the company’s annual meeting on Wednesday, China Telecom chairman and CEO Wang Xiaochu said the company this year will continue to focus on developing high-end market rather than competing in low-end segment.
During the first four months of this year, China Telecom signed up 9.57 million new mobile customers, down by over 20% from the same period a year earlier.
In April China Telecom added 3.07 million 3G subscribers, down 4% from the 3.2 million recruited in March, bringing its total 3G customer base to 81.1 million.
"The growth in subscribers is slowing down compared with last year, because the competition for the low-end segment is intense and we didn’t participate too much in that," Wang said. “Despite that, we’ve seen stronger ARPU and revenue."
On the devices side, he noted, the strategy is to focus on 1,000 yuan ($163) or above smartphones. The company also aims to reduce the volume of handsets it procures this year and let consumers to buy the handsets directly from retailers.
Commenting on earlier mainland media reports that the government will require all the three mobile carriers to deploy TD-LTE as their 4G technology, Wang said the company received no notice from the MIIT on the country’s 4G agenda.
He said China Telecom is currently conducting tests on both the FDD/LTE and TD-LTE technologies to see which is more efficient in terms of investment and operational efficiency. Results of initial analysis show that the investment cost on TD-LTE is higher than that on FDD-LTE.