Mobile global roaming tariffs slashed
By Li Weitao (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-06-16 08:43
Bowing to the pressure, many of the continent's leading mobile phone
operators agreed to reduce the price of their wholesale
connections.
Vodafone promised to cut the average cost to its customers
for calls in Europe by as much as 40 per cent.
Compared to European
operators, "the global roaming charges imposed by China Mobile are still too
high for most domestic users," said Guo.
The analyst estimated the
revenues generated from the global roaming service accounts for less than 5 per
cent of China Mobile's total revenue.
According to financial reports of
the Hong Kong-listed company, the firm's global roaming service for GSM (global
system for mobile communications) covered 203 countries by the end of 2005,
compared to 184 in the previous year.
And its global roaming for the GPRS
service covered 98 countries compared to 73 in 2004.
Many Chinese
travelling overseas have found the roaming service too costly in the past and
many chose to send text messages to keep in contact with people at back at
home.
Even so, sending a text message when travelling abroad usually
costs a user more than 1 yuan (12.5 US cents). At home, it costs only 0.1
yuan.
The aggressive price cuts could help China Mobile increase the
amount of calls made by its subscribers when using the global roaming service,
said Guo.
The cuts would not have a big impact on Unicom's business as it
has a much smaller subscriber base, he added.
By April, China Mobile had
265 million subscribers and Hong Kong-listed China Unicom had 132.7 million
subscribers.
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