BEIJING -- China's telecommunications sector logged steady expansion in the first seven months of this year, official data showed.

The combined industrial revenue rose 8.3 percent year-on-year to 944.2 billion yuan ($137.87 billion), according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Emerging businesses, such as big data, cloud computing, internet data centers 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.