At the opening of the 2026 China Internet Conference, CHINA UNICOM's Deputy General Manager and Party Leadership Group Member, Qiu Baohua, delivered a keynote address outlining the company's strategic evolution in the AI era.
He reflected on historical technological revolutions, noting that each has established a measurable, tradable, and operational fundamental unit of value. The electricity revolution gave rise to the kilowatt-hour, the information revolution to data traffic, and the current AI revolution is generating the 'Token'. As a universal unit of value measurement in the intelligent age, a new business model centered on Token operations is taking shape, fundamentally altering the traditional traffic-based operational logic of telecom operators.
Core Strategic Evolution
Qiu highlighted key shifts from traditional traffic management to Token operations. Firstly, the potential demand is fundamentally different. Data traffic growth is nearing its peak, with the average daily online time for Chinese internet users projected to be about 4.6 hours by the end of 2025, representing a natural limit for human engagement. In contrast, Tokens can be invoked 24/7, offering nearly limitless demand potential. Secondly, the value density is vastly superior. For equivalent cost, the value of intelligent services carried by processing 100 million Tokens is tens to hundreds of times greater than transmitting 1GB of ordinary data traffic. This necessitates a strategic pivot for operators from 'managing network pipelines' to 'managing intelligent services'.
Navigating the Transition
He emphasized that while opportunities abound, challenges accompany them. Operators must leverage their unique resource advantages and anchor value in practical applications to seize the initiative in this industry transformation. CHINA UNICOM is focusing on four key areas: strengthening foundational systems, enhancing internal efficiency, empowering services, and fostering ecosystem integration. The goal is to comprehensively improve capabilities across the entire Token lifecycle—generation, circulation, storage, and application—to develop high-performing AI agents with mature business models, thereby amplifying the commercial value of Tokens and ensuring each one delivers tangible industrial value.
Tangible Applications and Results
Qiu provided concrete examples, stating that CHINA UNICOM has made Token operations a core driver for improving quality and efficiency across the entire group, deploying AI applications in key scenarios including office work, customer service, marketing, and network operations. In office scenarios, AI agents built on internal company knowledge have improved document drafting and contract review efficiency by 70% and boosted business data analysis efficiency by 92%. For customer service and marketing, services have been redesigned based on user behavior and preference data. AI now handles over 85% of interactions on the 10010 customer service hotline, generating annual operational cost savings exceeding 100 million yuan. In network operations, AI-driven automated payment reminders and account settlements now handle a scale of over 10 billion yuan, simultaneously improving collection efficiency and the volume of recovered funds.
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