Although making 400 million yuan a day, transformation is still the key word of operators
Kaivps reported on August 29 that from fixed line to mobile phone, from 1G to 4G, from voice to traffic, technology is changing, and consumer demand is changing. However, in the past 20 years, the business model of operators has been extremely simple. They are like local tyrants, who spend huge amounts of money to build networks, "squeeze" device providers, grab users crazily, and make the industry more sad.
The three major telecom operators in China have all submitted their industry financial reports for the first half of the year. While their performance is improving, traffic management has become the key word, and the transformation of operation mode has become a common pursuit.
When the 4G market is not saturated, 5G will bring all kinds of "big connection" possibilities, and the new market brought by the expansion of connecting objects from individuals to families, enterprises and the 10 billion level Internet of Everything is prompting operators to begin to layout the 5G field.
However, the transformation is not easy, and operators still face many challenges.
4G dividend release wireless internet becomes the most profitable business
Under the superposition influence of a series of factors such as the macro-economic "new normal", the replacement of business tax with VAT, and the pressure drop of marketing expenses, the revenue and profits of the three major operators have been hovering at a low speed in the past two years, with some data falling by an astonishing amount. On August 23, China Telecom announced its interim performance report as of June 30. All three operators have gone out of the difficult times and entered the flow oriented development stage. Wireless Internet access has become the most profitable business.
Although the "speed increase and fee reduction" stimulated user traffic consumption, the impact of "speed increase and fee reduction" or "downward pressure on tariffs" and other factors on revenue was not mentioned in the performance reports of the three major operators in the first half of the year. Although there is no specific data accounting at present, and some operators said that the cancellation of roaming fees had little impact on their performance, from the three operators' response to the call of "speed increase and fee reduction" last year, the implementation of "traffic not reset", the cancellation of Beijing Tianjin Hebei long-distance roaming fees and other measures, the "traffic not reset" alone caused operators to reduce revenue by more than 30 billion in 2015, accounting for 2.6% of the annual revenue
Of course, the operators said they were ready for this. Li Yue, president of China Mobile, stressed after the performance release that the current voice business still accounts for 37% of China Mobile's revenue. China Mobile hopes to eliminate the risks brought by the cancellation of long-distance and roaming fees in about two years.
In the economic operation of the communication industry in the first half of 2016 recently released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the description of "explosive growth" in the number of 4G users was used. The total number of 4G users exceeded the sum of 2G and 3G users for the first time, and also exceeded half of the global 4G users.
The development of 4G exceeded expectations and became the most exciting part of operators' financial reports. The traffic provoked the growth of telecom operators' revenue. The annual financial report data of China Mobile is the most typical, with the wireless Internet service accounting for 43.3%, surpassing the traditional service and becoming the largest source of income. This was achieved when the mobile Internet service charges fell 39.6% year on year.
Fu Liang, an independent telecom analyst, said that "traffic operation" will become the main business of the three major operators in the future. It is not ruled out that there will be multiple business models for "traffic operation" in the future.
"Traffic management has become the top priority of operators' business, but in terms of traffic management, operators have not yet had a clear business model based on the needs of business ecology." Liu Qicheng, chief editor of China Communications Network, said that although the current operators have done a lot of work in traffic monetization, traffic backward management and other models. Compared with the oneness and controllability of traditional voice services, operators need to have a new thinking and reconstruct a new business model from user experience identification to traffic control, from the change of billing methods to the promotion of cooperation platforms.
5G Chengxin Hope operators have formulated commercial plans for 5G networks
In addition to 4G, the data of emerging business is the most eye-catching in the financial reports of the three major operators, which directly reflects their efforts to expand the Internet of Things and explore the layout of digital services.
According to the prediction of market research institutions, the number of Internet of Things connections and market size will develop rapidly in the next 5-10 years. In 2020, the number of global market connections will reach 50 billion, and the Chinese market will exceed 10 billion; In 2020, the scale of the global Internet of Things market will be 11 trillion yuan, and China will exceed one trillion yuan; Among the global mobile M2M (machine to machine) types, the number of mobile M2M connections reached 320 million by the end of 2015, with an annual growth rate of 32%. The number of mobile M2M connections in the Chinese market exceeded 100 million, becoming the world's largest market.
Although the first 5G version will not be formed until 2018 at the earliest, from 2016 to 2018, the demand for the smooth evolution of 4G networks to 5G is very clear, and the huge market potential and low-cost advantages of mobile M2M predicted by it attract the active investment of global telecom operators.
At present, the three major telecom operators in China are orderly promoting the early research, development and experiment of 5G networks, and have all formulated plans to launch commercial 5G networks in 2020. Most market analysts believe that, based on past experience, the first two stages of the three major operators
The investment in network construction will be no less than 4G network construction, with a total amount of more than 300 billion yuan.
In the Shanghai Disney Smart Park, China Unicom introduced NB IoT (narrowband Internet of Things based on 4.5G technology) technology, deployed 10 outdoor sites to cover the entire park, with a total of 5000 intelligent parking terminals, realizing small-scale applications, including intelligent parking, intelligent water meters, and will later expand services to environmental monitoring, pedestrian flow management, etc. China Telecom is also actively following up, and formally set up a project to carry out research and development on NB IoT key technologies, terminals and services.
In terms of big data business, China Mobile has become dominant in terms of data volume, data authenticity, sustainability, etc., and its ability to relate to customer information has given it unique competitive advantages. In accordance with this, we continue to deepen and open our mind and model, and open our ability to provide big data to the outside world. Although it is still unknown, the insiders believe that this will become a huge capability of China Mobile's new business model.
Transformation is not easy, it not only requires enthusiasm and technology, but also concerns genes and culture
Transformation is an important part of the medium-term financial reports of the three major operators. However, transformation requires not only lasting enthusiasm and technology, but also genes and culture.
From fixed line phone to mobile phone, from 1G to 4G, from voice to traffic, technology and consumer demand are changing. However, the business model of operators in the past 20 years is extremely simple. They are like local tyrants, who spend huge amounts of money to build networks, "squeeze" device vendors, grab users crazily, make the industry cry, and make themselves physically and mentally exhausted.
While continuing to write a new chapter, an operator also said: "The telecommunications industry has never declined, but our thinking is still in place." Because of this, operators have been learning Internet technology, advocating Internet innovation, and promoting the Internet spirit for many years, but the operator's management and control mode has brought a lot of resistance to the development of Internet business. At the same time, I feel more and more clearly that my body lacks Internet genes.
Many people compare Feixin with WeChat and regard it as a representative of operators who are not good at Internet business.
China Mobile supports the development opportunities of Feixin at the cost. Ning Yu said, "In the growth process of a product, there will be countless discussions and decisions, each of which may have a bearing on the life and death of the product." In the past few years, the average annual growth rate of data traffic of most operators in the world has reached 40% to 50%, and China's telecom operators have also come out of difficult times, but many tests are still ahead.
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Three operators earn 404 million yuan a day
According to the performance report of the three major operators, the net profit of the three major operators in the first half of the year was 73.674 billion yuan, with an average daily profit of more than 400 million yuan.
The performance report of China Mobile shows that it is 7.1% longer; The net profit was 60.572 billion yuan, up 5.6% year on year. The performance report of China Unicom showed that the revenue in the first half of the year was 140.255 billion yuan, down 3.1% year on year; The net profit was 1.429 billion yuan, down 79.6% year on year. The performance report of China Telecom showed that the revenue in the first half of the year was 176.828 billion yuan, up 7.2% year on year; Net profit was 11.673 billion yuan, up 6.3% year on year
On the whole, the performance of the three major operators in the first half of the year was satisfactory, and the revenue of China Mobile and China Telecom both increased by more than 7%. The three major operators earned an average of 404 million yuan per day in the first half of the year. This figure is lower than 416 million yuan in the same period last year. The daily earnings of 404 million yuan were higher than the performance of the second half of last year, and also higher than the daily earnings of 320 million yuan of the third largest operator in the first quarter of this year.
