China’s state telcos to eliminate domestic roaming charges

DOMESTIC roaming fees charged by China’s three state-owned telecommunications companies will be scrapped.

For small and medium-sized enterprises, pricing incentives will be offered instead.

China Telecommunications Corp., China Mobile Communications Corp. and China United Network Communications Group Ltd want to encourage corporate customers to adopt network technology, such as cloud computing.

Inter-province roaming fees will end by October 2017, the chairmen of the three firms told reporters in Beijing on Monday, as reported by Reuters.

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The Hong Kong-listed state-owned companies, which also have telecom subsidiaries called China Telecom Corp Ltd, China Mobile Ltd and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd, will also offer discount pricing schemes for businesses.

The move is part of the government’s bid to lower telecommunication fees to spur consumer spending and cut corporate operating expenses.

These fall under a broader policy of increasing efficiency and capacity in traditional industries.

China Mobile, among top 3 most valuable telecoms brands in the world https://t.co/lbXpsGoMQF

— CM Crosspay (@cmcrosspay) March 1, 2017

The government also hopes to bolster price competition in the telecoms sector and will now approve applications from private enterprises seeking to market and sell telecom services.

The Information Industry and Technology Ministry has approved applications from 198 private companies to provide broadband Internet services under a pilot project, as well as 42 companies to resell mobile network services starting from 2013.

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