China's Ministry of Technology and Information Technology said that in the first half of 2025, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and China broadnet added a total of 104 million 5G subscribers, bringing the total to more than 1.1 billion subscribers and accounting for nearly 61% of the total domestic mobile connection.
Of which, China Mobile attracted 47 million new subscribers in the first 6 months of 2025, bringing the total number of users of their 5G service to 599.3 million. China Telecom has 31.3 million new 5G users, bringing its total number of customers to 282 million.
The number of customers using the new 5G network of Chinese carrier far exceeds the total 5G subscribers of some carrier in the world, except for Reliance Jio with 213 million people. Meanwhile, network operator Airtel - Jio's rival in India has 177 million 5G subscribers.
GSMA Intelligence data after the end of the second quarter of 2025 shows that some US carrier also have a large number of 5G subscribers, T-Mobile (93.4 million subscribers), followed by AT&T (77.6 million) and Verizon wireless (75.5 million).
Meanwhile, the three largest network operators in Japan have a total of more than 92 million 5G users. Worldwide, it is estimated that the top 11 5G network operators have more than 1.7 billion connections.
It is estimated that by the end of 2025, the total number of 5G-connected devices worldwide will reach 2.7 billion, of which China will account for 40%.
