End of outdated telecom fees shows leaders' reform resolve

Two applicants for the Beijing Film Academy's school of performing arts make long-distance calls to their relatives about their tests in Beijing on Thursday. [Photo/China Daily]

ON SUNDAY, while delivering the Government Work Report on the opening day of the fifth plenary session of the 12th National People's Congress, Premier Li Keqiang said that all roaming fees and long-distance charges for domestic calls will be canceled within the year. One day later, the three domestic telecom giants China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom announced they would cancel the charges on Oct 1. Thepaper.cn comments:

Roaming fees in China date back to 1994, when the then Ministry of Post and Telecommunications issued a guidance document allowing the country's telecom companies to collect domestic roaming fees when a subscriber leaves the local service area, with the amount ranging from 0.6 yuan (8 cents) to 0.8 yuan a minute depending on the packages subscribers have signed up for.

Many jokingly call it a "fossil charge" because when it was collected, cellphone technology was still in the 2G epoch. Now we are in the 4G technology age, with 5G coming soon, and the charge is no longer justified.

The canceling of the roaming fees is a giant step forward. It shows domestic telecom markets will be connected with each other, instead of continuing to be divided among different carriers as they are at present.

That will in turn increase the strength of China's telecommunications industry. With a unified market of more than 1.3 billion residents, China will definitely gain more influence in the global telecom sector.

It will also benefit ordinary residents, as users will no longer have to pay more when making calls outside their local service areas. The elimination of the fees is also expected to benefit companies that do business via mobile platforms.

The canceling of the fees is an achievement of the government's ongoing reform drive and would have been impossible without the resolve of the top leadership to press ahead with reform.