China mobile reports 18% surge in mobile data traffic driven by AI content generation

During the 2026 Mobile Network Conference and China Mobile Partner Conference on November 6, China Mobile announced significant growth in its mobile network traffic, attributing the acceleration to artificial intelligence. Internal testing data from the company revealed that mobile internet traffic increased by 18% this year, marking a doubling of the growth rate compared to the previous year. Crucially, content generated by AI was identified as the primary engine for this surge, contributing to a fivefold increase in traffic volume and establishing a new source model for the internet. However, China Mobile acknowledged that current network resources are optimized for download capacity and are ill-suited to match the structural shifts in data transmission. Furthermore, the rise of AI has altered data flow patterns across the network. While the overall network average for uplink to downlink traffic is 1:9, AI applications exhibit a more balanced ratio of 1:6, with some future applications potentially reaching 1:1 or higher. The company also noted that AI deployment faces latency bottlenecks, citing an average first token call delay of several hundred milliseconds, with the mobile network side contributing 35 milliseconds against a 665-millisecond delay from the cloud platform, necessitating deeper integration between the network and platform sides.