China's telecommunications sector logged steady expansion in the first seven months of this year, official data showed.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the combined industrial revenue rose 8.3 percent year on year to 944.2 billion yuan (about US$137.87 billion), Chinese news agency, Xinhua, reported.
Emerging businesses, such as big data, cloud computing, internet data centres and Internet of Things, expanded rapidly during the period. The emerging business revenue of China's three telecom giants -- China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom -- surged 35.1 percent year on year to 184.3 billion yuan.
In breakdown, the revenue for cloud computing services soared 131.7 percent year on year, while that for big data and Internet of Things surged 60.3 percent and 25.9 percent, respectively.
Steady progress was also made in the construction of 5G base stations. By the end of July, the number of 5G base stations in China had reached a total of nearly 1.97 million.