China's telecom sector reports steady performance in Jan-Oct

BEIJING - China's telecommunications industry reported steady performance in the first 10 months of the year, official data showed.

The combined revenue of the telecom industry reached nearly 1.1 trillion yuan ($156 billion) during the period, up 0.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

In breakdown, revenue from fixed-line communications of the three major telecom companies - China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom - amounted to 348.3 billion yuan during the 10 months, up 9.2 percent from a year earlier.

Their revenue from moble business reached 749 billion yuan during the period, contributing 68.3 percent of the sector's total revenue, said the MIIT.

The number of cellphone users climbed 2.9 percent year-on-year to about 1.6 billion by the end of last month, with 4G subscribers hitting 1.27 billion and making up 79.4 percent of mobile phone users.

The data also showed that the number of fixed broadband Internet users in China grew steadily during the period, with 81.8 percent of subscribers' Internet speed reaching over 100Mbps.