No One-way Charge on Mobile Phone Call Will Come To ShortlyIn the early 1999, the State Planning Development Commission and Ministry of Information Industry held a meeting on one-way charge for mobile phone calls. The Ministry of Information Industry suggested that the calling fee for mobile phones would be increased from 0.4 to 0.5 yuan per minute with no charge for the receiving side. If to dial the mobile phone from a fixed set, an additional fee of 0.2 yuan per minute will be charged upon that for a city call, which will be appropriated to the A/C of mobile phone and Unicom companies for the compensation of the decreased mobile phone fees. To encourage competition in the telephone and information market and to benefit those of medium and lower earnings, the State Planning Development Commission said at the meeting that they did not agree with the idea of one-way charge for mobile phone calls.The main reasons go as follows: First, according to the China Unicom, if the Ministry of Information Industry adopts the one-way charge proposal, the annual operating income of China Mobile and Unicom will be decreased by one third, and may lapse into losses. Secondly, the cost of one-way charge so far cannot be defined for certain. Since China Telecom is now brewing over a system reform, it is hard to foretell what the one-way charge will inflict upon it when it opens a separate account. Thirdly, the one-way charge promises no good to those with medium and lower earnings, government offices and enterprises. The adoption of one-way charge will help switch the burden of the mobile phone users to the users of the fixed phones. This is actually to shift the burden of those who earn more to those who earn less. Furthermore, many fixed phone-sets are used in daytimes, which are mostly for office use and the cost is mainly borne by government offices and enterprises. So this would mean to shift the burden of those with middle and high incomes onto the shoulders of those with medium and lower incomes, to switch the personal onto that of the public. This modification of benefits should in no way be advocated. Fourthly, there are only 30 more countries in the world, which are carrying out the one-way charge for mobile phones, and these countries have adopted the way from the very beginning, while most of the countries adopt the two-way charge. In view of the above, the State Planning Development Commission deems it that the two-way charge to be replaced by one-way is not an inevitable choice, and so it does not agree to change from the two-way charge to that by one-way. Nevertheless, the State Planning Development Commission still leaves some leeway for the fee modification, and it suggests that this will be taken into further consideration after the winding up of the system reform in China Telecom. |
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