Share this article
Telecoms Giant Wants to Move Mobile Data Top-Ups to a Blockchain
China Mobile, one of China's three state-owned telecoms giants, is exploring moving part of its mobile data business to a distributed ledger.
By Wolfie Zhao
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 8:01 a.m. Published Jun 5, 2018, 11:00 a.m.
China Mobile Corporation, one of the three state-owned telecommunications giants in the country, is exploring the use of distributed ledger technology within its core mobile data business.
According to patent application filed with China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) in November 2016 and made public on Tuesday, the company is eyeing the development of a blockchain network to handle transaction requests for mobile data top-ups and remove the heavy processing load from its data centers.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
With such a system, the document says, when a user first signs up for a network plan, an initial top-up transaction will be created together with the user's information. This data is then stored on a blockchain that consists of what the firm calls "top-up nodes."
Subsequently, when the user sends requests for further data top-ups, China Mobile would debit funds from the user's account, at which point the blockchain nodes would verify the transaction based on the information it already holds on the user. Following verification, China Mobile would then allocate more mobile data to the user, according to the request.
As such, the system would sustain a chain of records of a user's transaction history in a decentralized manner.
In the filing, China Mobile said that the effort comes at a time when the firm is facing rapidly increasing numbers of mobile devices and a resultant spike in data requests from customers.
The company commented on the potential advantages of the proposed technology, saying:
"A centralized structure imposes a significant cost of security and trust as it needs to integrate a system's safety, privacy and anonymity into a design ... which inevitably increases the difficulty of technology renovation with even a higher cost of maintenance. As such, we need a new decentralized technology to manage the mobile data allocation."
Read the full patent filing below:
China Mobile by CoinDesk on Scribd
China Mobile image via Shutterstock
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Farcaster Switches to Wallet-First Strategy to Grow Its Social App
The protocol still consists of casts, follows, reactions, identities and wallets, and third-party clients are free to emphasize whichever components they want.
What to know:
- Farcaster is shifting its focus from social media to its in-app wallet and trading features to drive user engagement.
- Cofounder Dan Romero acknowledged the lack of sustainable growth in their social-first strategy over the past 4.5 years.
- The wallet's trading tools have shown the strongest product-market fit, leading to a strategic pivot towards financial use cases.
Top Stories
