BEIJING -- China's telecommunications industry sustained steady expansion in revenue in the first three quarters, with emerging businesses such as cloud computing posting rapid growth, official data showed.

The combined operating revenue of the sector stood at roughly 1.2 trillion yuan ($167.37 billion) in the January-September period, rising 8.2 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Emerging businesses such as big data, cloud computing, internet data centers and Internet of Things registered a rapid revenue increase during the period. The emerging business revenue of China's three telecom giants -- China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom -- jumped 33.4 percent from a year earlier to 232.9 billion yuan.

Specifically, revenue from cloud computing and big data soared 127.6 percent and 62.6 percent, respectively, in the first nine months, while that from data centers logged an increase of 14.3 percent.

China's 5G network development has continued to advance. The number of 5G base stations reached 2.22 million by the end of September, a net increase of 795,000 from the end of 2021.