China Unicom Reports H1 2026 Results, Focusing on AI Infrastructure and Tariff Simplification

China Unicom announced its H1 2026 financial results, reporting a 34.8% decline in net profit to 4.1 billion RMB, while revealing plans to simplify its tariff packages to focus on user value. The telecom giant also expanded its intelligent computing capacity to over 45 EFLOPS and launched "UniClaw," an autonomous AI agent platform. As the traditional telecommunications market enters a phase of saturated competition, major carriers are shifting their focus from price wars to value-added services like AI and cloud computing. China Unicom's massive investments in 5G-Advanced (5G-A) and AI infrastructure highlight how telecom operators are positioning themselves as core providers of national computing power. China Unicom's capital expenditure for H1 2026 reached 24.1 billion RMB, with computing power investments increasing by over 80% year-on-year to account for 37% of the total budget. Additionally, its 5G-Advanced network now covers more than 330 cities, and its joint network sharing initiative with China Telecom has saved an estimated $56.5 billion in investment costs.