China's telecom sector maintains steady growth

BEIJING -- China's telecom sector continued steady expansion last year, with robust mobile network services and improving internet infrastructure.

The sector's revenue rose 3 percent year on year to 1.3 trillion yuan (more than $190 billion) in 2018, according to a report of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Given vigorous development of social networking apps, the proportion of phone call charges in the total telecom revenue dropped further to 13.7 percent last year from 17.9 percent in 2017.

The income from mobile data and internet services, backed by the rapidly-expanding 4G network, gained 10.2 percent, accounting for 46.6 percent of the total.

China channeled more energy into telecom infrastructure last year. Some 5.78 million km of optical cables were built in 2018, bringing the total length nationwide to 43.58 million km. The number of 4G base stations increased by 439,000, with the total number at 3.72 million.

With improving infrastructure and vigorous information consumption, the telecom sector maintained stable growth and played a bigger role in driving national economic and social development, the report said.