Official: China to Introduce One-way Charge on Cell-phone Calls

An official with the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) recently indicated that the MII, the State Development Planning Commission and relevant departments of China have initially reached a consensus on one-way charge for cell-phone calls, this regulation would be put into effect upon approval from the State Council.

According to the new standard, prices of most of the service items will drop notably, such as the network connection fee, to promote the popularization of China's internet and the development of the e-business. When the extensive use of inner-city calls is taken into consideration, the fee on city phone calls won't be raised too much, so as to avoid exerting too much impact on people's life; however, there is no more room for further charge reduction.

He pointed out that the publication of the new Telecom Regulation will facilitate formation of a transparent and competitive telecom market in China, and will be able to provide more options especially in regard to value-added telecom services. At present, a diversified competitive market has initially taken shape in the Chinese telecom market. In the aspect of basic telecom service, there are seven national enterprises, in each kind of business there are two or more enterprises participating in competition. But he also pointed out that a situation featuring full, or effective, competition has not as yet been formed, there is a great deal of work to do especially in regard to introducing a competitive system to the local phone call service.

Talking about the relations between the telecom network and the radio-TV network, he pointed out that the telecom network does not participate in the making and broadcasting of programs and, on the premise of the separation of network from station and government administration from enterprise management in the radio-TV network, the two networks each infiltrate the other in the service field, such a state of affairs is the inevitable result of the development of information technology. The two sides each have their own strong points, which should be chosen by the market, and their development should not be checked.



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