China’s three telecom giants race into the AI token economy

China’s telecom industry is entering its next major business transition, evolving from selling voice minutes to monetizing mobile data and now to packaging and trading AI tokens. This week, China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom collectively unveiled token-based service plans and ecosystem partnerships, signaling how operators are positioning themselves for the rise of the token economy. The latest moves mark a strategic shift away from the industry’s long-running price wars over traffic a