Shares in China’s second and third-largest state-owned telecom companies jumped yesterday on news of an alliance between them to take on market leader China Mobile.
China Unicom and China Telecom outlined a wide-ranging agreement to fight their dominant competitor with areas of strategic co-operation including sharing capital expenditure and promoting smartphone standardisation, in addition to joint negotiation of international roaming rates and working together to promote their products.
Third-ranked China Telecom and number two China Unicom each rallied more than 7 per cent in Hong Kong before ending the day up 4.8 per cent and 3.8 per cent, respectively.