China Mobile, spurred by steady gains last year, has raised its capital spending this year to mount an aggressive expansion of infrastructure and services, including extensive trials of its advanced fourth-generation wireless system.
The world's largest mobile network operator, with 584 million total subscribers as of December, plans to spend 132.4 billion yuan (HK$157 billion) this year, up from 124.3 billion yuan last year, after earlier providing guidance of a 20 per cent year-on-year decline in capital expenditure.
It aims to spend another 255.9 billion yuan over the next two years.
Chairman Wang Jianzhou said the carrier 'will expand into new areas and lead the development of mobile internet' to stay ahead of domestic rivals China Unicom and China Telecom Corp, and eventually become a global industry leader.
Part of that strategy has China Mobile promoting the wide adoption of the mainland-backed 4G standard, known as Time-Division Long-Term Evolution (TD-LTE), by telecommunications equipment manufacturers and network operators in other countries.
'China Mobile has previously said it is seeking to expand globally in the next 10 years, with an initial focus on emerging markets, but any projects that would help the development of TD-LTE would be considered,' said Lisa Soh, an analyst at Macquarie Equities Research.