China Telecom is one of the three major telecommunications providers over in China, and it appears that China Telecom is the only one out of the three to post a drop in net profits for the first quarter, posting an unaudited net profit fall of 6.5 percent from the previous yearduring the 3-month period.

According to an article over on the Wall Street Journal, the net profit for China Telecom in the 3-months ending the 31st of March 2012, was 4.27 billion yuan, which is down from 4.57 billion the previous year, whilst operating revenue was up 15.7 percent to 67.93 billion yuan, which is up from the previous year’s 58.72 billion yuan.

Apparently China Telecom says the reason for the Q1 net profit fall is down to rising expences such as network lease and handset sales costs when they launched marketing initiatives for their March launch of the Apple iPhone 4S, and is the first mobile operator in China to offer the new iOS handset.

Wang Xiaochu, a chief exec for China Telecom remains positive and has said that mobile services continue top expand rapidly, demonstrating rapid growth in mobile customer revenues and scale, along with progressive increase in subscriber market share.

Apparently during March, China Telecom’s 3G user growth lagged behind its rivals when the company added 2.40 million new users whilst rival China Mobile saw a rise of 2.975 million, and China Unicom saw a 2,.966 million rise. Thus at the end of March China Mobile has 59.563 million 3G users, China Unicom has 48.860 million, and China Telecom has 43.55 million.