China’s three operators reported mobile service revenue increased 5.7 per cent year-on-year in January to CNY72.8 billion ($11.1 billion), despite an 11 per cent drop in SMS revenue.

Fixed service revenue rose 2.1 per cent to CNY25.8 billion, leading to a 4.8 per cent rise in overall service revenue in January to CNY98.6 billion, C114.net reported.

SMS traffic and revenue dropped 11.3 per cent to CNY54.08 billion and CNY3.07 billion, respectively. Call volume fell 1.1 per cent year-on-year to 235 billion minutes.

Mobile internet traffic soared 121 per cent to 540 million gigabytes in January, while fixed broadband traffic rose 21.5 per cent to 4.8 trillion minutes.

Total mobile users reached 1.28 billion, with mobile broadband (3G and 4G) subscribers jumping by 53 million to 759 million and accounting for 59 per cent of the total.

The three operators – China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom – added 1.45 million broadband access subscribers in January, taking their total to 210 million. FTTH subscribers accounted for 58 per cent of the total.