BEIJING - China's telecommunications sector posted steady expansion in the first quarter (Q1) of the year, with emerging businesses such as big data and cloud computing logging rapid growth, official data showed.

The combined industrial revenue rose 9.3 percent year-on-year to 393.5 billion yuan ($60.92 billion), a pace 2.8 percentage points faster than the same period last year, 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, registered rapid expansion. The emerging business revenue of China's three telecom giants -- China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom, surged 36.3 percent year-on-year to 79.7 billion yuan.

In breakdown, the revenue for cloud computing services soared 138.1 percent year-on-year, while that for big data and Internet of Things surged 59.1 percent and 23.9 percent, respectively.

Steady progress was also made in the construction of 5G base stations. By the end of March, China's 5G base stations reached 1.56 million in number, with 134,000 built in the first three months of the year.