China's telecom sector logs sound performance in Jan.-July

BEIJING, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- China's telecommunications industry logged strong performance in the first seven months of this year, with emerging businesses and 5G services registering steady growth, official data shows.

Companies in the sector raked in combined revenue of 1.01 trillion yuan (about 140.51 billion U.S. dollars) in the period, up 6.2 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

China's three telecom giants -- China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom -- saw their revenue for emerging businesses, such as internet data centers, big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things, surge 19 percent year on year to 212.9 billion yuan, accounting for 21.2 percent of the total revenue of telecommunications businesses.

The adoption of 5G technology continued steady expansion in the same period. By the end of July, China had about 3.06 million 5G base stations.

At the end of last month, the number 5G mobile phone users with the country's three telecom giants was 695 million, an increase of 134 million from the end of 2022, accounting for 40.6 percent of all of their mobile phone users.

China's 5G applications have been integrated into 60 major categories of the economy, according to the ministry.