China's telecom giants see revenue up 27.4% in July

China Mobile's 4G experience center in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.[Photo/China Daily]

BEIJING - China's top three telecom operators saw a healthy spike in revenue in July thanks to services like 4G, official data showed.

The three companies -- China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom -- reported combined telecom business revenue of 192.8 billion yuan ($30.2 billion) last month, up 27.4 percent year on year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Friday.

Their combined telecom business revenue in the first seven months hit 1.25 trillion yuan, up 23.8 percent from a year earlier, said the MIIT.

4G users increased by more than 25 million in July to reach 250 million. Text messaging, however, is under pressure from alternative online services, 418.9 billion messages were sent in the first seven months of the year, 5.6 percent less year on year.