(Yicai) Oct. 23 -- China now has over one billion users of the fifth-generation mobile network, according to the latest financial reports from the country’s three main telecoms operators China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.

All three carriers posted a respectable performance in their earnings reports for the first nine months.

China Mobile logged a 5 percent jump in net profit in the first three quarters from the same period last year to CNY110.9 billion (USD15.5 billion) while revenue climbed 2 percent to CNY791.5 billion (USD111 billion), according to the Beijing-based carrier’s latest financial report released on Oct. 21.

China Telecom posted a 8.1 percent jump in net profit over the period to CNY29.3 billion (USD4.1 billion) while revenue advanced 2.9 percent to CNY391.97 billion (USD55 billion), it said in its earnings report released yesterday.

Net profit at China Unicom surged 10 percent to CNY8.3 billion (USD1.1 billion), while revenue climbed 3 percent to CNY290.1 billion (USD40.7 billion), according to its financial report also released yesterday.

The three carriers’ investment in research and development soared by double digits in the nine months ended Sept. 30. China Mobile's R&D expenditure skyrocketed 34.4 percent year on year to CNY20.3 billion (USD2.8 billion), China Telecom's R&D expenses jumped 19.3 percent to CNY8.7 billion and China Unicom's R&D spending surged 26 percent to CNY5.4 billion.

The firms are significantly hiking R&D spending in future communication fields such as artificial intelligence, low-altitude economy, and satellite internet. Among these, the computing power network, as the foundational infrastructure for AI, holds an important position.

China Mobile’s general computing scale reached 8.2 Exaflops, or one quintillion floating point operations per second, in the first half, and its intelligent computing scale reached 19.6 Exaflops, the company said at the end of last month.

China Mobile put supercomputing nodes in Hohhot, northeastern Harbin province, and six other locations into operation in June. Its intelligent computing capacity is expected to reach no less than 24 Exaflops this year.

The two other operators are also actively developing their computing power networks. China Telecom has set up inference pools across all 31 provincial-level regions, and its intelligent computing power has reached 21 Exaflops, it said in its semi-annual report. And China Unicom is building smart computing centers in locations like Shanghai’s Lingang and Hohhot and its intelligent computing power has reached 10 Exaflops, it said in its half-yearly report.

Editor: Kim Taylor