China Telecom Earnings: Network Upgrade Costs, Sluggish Subscriber Gains Weigh On Profits

China Telecom's net profit rose marginally by about 1% year-over-year (y-o-y) to RMB 17.7 billion ($2.84 billion) in 2014, as overall cost savings offset the impact of sluggish wireless subscriber growth. These cost savings were largely on account of a 33% decline in handset subsidies as well as a favorable revision of interconnection fees by the government last year. The carrier?s operating revenues grew about 1% y-o-y to over RMB 324 billion ($55.3 billion) on account of increasing 3G-4G servi...