BEIJING, March 30 -- China's telecommunication industry registered steady expansion in the first two months of this year, official data showed.

The combined business revenue of firms in the sector totaled 292.3 billion yuan (about 41.2 billion U.S. dollars) in the period, rising 4.3 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Combined revenue of emerging businesses, such as big data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, continued to log double-digit growth.

China's three telecom giants -- China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom -- saw their revenue from emerging businesses up 11.3 percent year on year to 75.76 billion yuan, driving up the telecom sector's total revenue by 2.8 percentage points.

Specifically, revenue from cloud computing and big data jumped 17.3 percent and 30.3 percent, respectively, from the same period last year.