China's telecom sector records stable expansion in January-May

BEIJING, July 3 (Xinhua) -- China's telecommunication industry registered steady growth in the first five months of the year, with strong expansion in emerging businesses and 5G services, official data shows.

The sector raked in 665 billion yuan (99.46 billion U.S. dollars) in total revenue during the period, up 8.5 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Emerging businesses, including those in the big data, cloud computing, internet data center and Internet of Things sectors, continued to expand notably in the period.

The combined revenue of the emerging businesses of China's three telecom giants -- China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom -- surged 34.3 percent year on year to 128.3 billion yuan, accounting for 19.3 percent of the sector's total revenue, the ministry said.

At the end of May, China had 1.7 million 5G base stations, accounting for 16.7 percent of the country's mobile network base stations. Some 275,000 5G base stations were built in the first five months of the year.

The data also shows that 5G mobile phone users of the three telecom giants reached 428 million at the end of May, representing 25.8 percent of China's total mobile phone users.