Home
News
In Focus
Business
Metro
Nation
World
Sports
Feature
Opinion
View more »Opinion Columns
Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
Restaurants get off to a quick start thanks to game-changing policies
High service charges on event ticket refunds call for further regulation
Sunday
- Subscribe
Roaming fees to be axed by end of 2016
Print Edition
CHINA will abolish the nearly two-decade-old domestic roaming fees for voice communications by the end of this year, telecommunication carriers said yesterday.
The scrapping of the fees will have limited impact on the state-owned telcos’ profit and revenue as China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom have switched from traditional voice business to 4G and various data services, analysts said.
Besides consumers have already adopted instant messages tools like WeChat, FaceTime and QQ for communications instead of relying on traditional voice communications.
China Mobile, the country’s largest operator with over 800 million users, said it would scrap domestic roaming charges by the end of 2016. It has stopped selling new service packages that include domestic roaming charges, said Li Yue, president of China Mobile.
In Shanghai, China Mobile has already stopped charging users domestic roaming fees in all 4G packages. The new policy will take effect by the end of this year, the carrier told Shanghai Daily yesterday.
China Mobile had over 429 million 4G users by the end of June, making up 51 percent of its total subscribers. It’s developing music, video, reading and games to keep growing.
China Unicom will cancel the roaming fees from October 1 and China Telecom will adopt the new policy by year-end.
The roaming fees, almost double local call costs on average, is a hotly-debated issue in China. Many consumers and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology — the regulator — have asked the telecom carriers to abolish them.
In April, the ministry was said to require the carriers to “gradually stop charging” them.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
