THE country’s mobile data consumption more than doubled in the first five months of this year despite the slower expansion of the telecom sector, official data showed.

Mobile Internet traffic soared 114.6 percent year on year to 45.2 billion gigabytes in the period, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The telecom sector’s revenue rose 0.3 percent year on year to 559 billion yuan (US$82 billion). The growth was down 3.9 percentage points from that in the same period of 2018.

China’s three major telecom operators earned 59.9 billion yuan in value-added services including Internet data center, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, up 29 percent year on year. Value-added services worked as main contributors to the growth of the sector, according to the ministry.

Supported by the popularization of service registration and identity verification through mobile phones, short messages also increased 32.4 percent year on year, generating 16.57 billion yuan in revenue, up 7.1 percent year on year. (Xinhua)