China Unicom first-half profit jumps 26 percent on higher mobile Internet revenue, lower fees

State-owned phone company China Unicom says first-half profit jumped on higher mobile data revenue and lower fees to connect to a rival's network.

Unicom said Thursday that profit rose 26 percent to 6.7 billion yuan ($843 million) in the January-June period.

Revenue from third- and fourth-generation phone services grew 33 percent to 54.4 billion yuan. That helped push overall revenue up 3.6 percent to 149.6 billion yuan.

Fees incurred to connect to other networks fell 23 percent to 7.6 billion yuan.

Unicom is China's second-largest wireless carrier by subscribers, which rose by 14 million to 295 million during the first half.

The company and China's two other major state-owned phone companies, China Mobile and China Telecom, are locked in fierce competition as they invest heavily on rolling out fourth-generation technology.