BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- China Unicom said Monday that its net profits rose 11 percent year on year in 2019, despite slightly lower revenues amid fierce competition in the industry.
Net profits hit 11.3 billion yuan (about 1.61 billion U.S. dollars), the telecom operator said in its annual report.
Revenues went down 0.1 percent to reach 290.5 billion yuan. The biggest bright spot was its cloud-computing business, whose revenues soared 147 percent year on year.
The company plans to invest 35 billion yuan on 5G this year, compared with 7.9 billion yuan in 2019.
In a bid to control costs, China Unicom has partnered with China Telecom, another leading telecom operator, to build a 5G network of base stations. The partnership has already saved them a total of 10 billion yuan.
The two companies will strive to finish construction on 250,000 5G base stations across the country by the end of the third quarter, one quarter ahead of schedule, and will share more infrastructure with each other in the future, according to the report.
