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

The combined industrial revenue rose 8.2 percent year-on-year to 1.07 trillion yuan (about $153.3 billion), according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Emerging businesses, such as big data, cloud computing, internet data centers, and the Internet of Things, expanded rapidly during the period. The total revenue from emerging businesses of China's three telecom giants — China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom — surged 34.1 percent year-on-year to 207.5 billion yuan.

In breakdown, the revenue for cloud computing services soared 130.3 percent year-on-year, while that for big data and the Internet of Things surged 56.4 percent and 24.5 percent, respectively.

Steady progress was also made in the construction of 5G base stations. By the end of August, the number of 5G base stations in China had exceeded 2.1 million.