China is exploring a merger between two of the country's three telecom operators, China Unicom and China Telecom, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. This would strengthen their position in the mobile market versus market leader China Mobile and support quicker development of 5G in China. The escalating trade war with the US has raised the importance of moving ahead on 5G in the country, according to the report.
Chinese media have speculated on a possible merger, though executives at Unicom and China Telecom have played those down as recently as last month at their earnings briefings. Unicom said it isn’t aware of a merger, a comment echoed by China Telecom. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which oversees China’s state-owned enterprises, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology didn’t reply to Bloomberg's requests for comment.A merger would create the world's second-largest mobile operator, with nearly 600 million customers. That's still a third less than the over 900 million at China Mobile.
