The booth of China Mobile Communications Corp at an Internet expo in Beijing. The nation's largest telecom carrier will cut salaries for its top brass. [Photo/China Daily]

Mobile phone users in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province will not pay long-distance and roaming charges when they call each other thanks to more integrated development of the three regions.

China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom are reported to have submitted implementation plans for approval to meet the target set by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that long-distance and roaming fees will be scrapped for users in the three regions from August 1.

The country's three major carriers have also told branches in the three regions to formulate plans and update systems to cope with the changes.

The adjustment will not affect fixed telephones and local mobile data services.

The fee reduction will affect profitability of the carriers given their declining revenue and profit. It is estimated that China Mobile alone will lose billions of yuan annually due to the new fee structure.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology asked the three major carriers last week to make further reductions in overseas roaming rates and allow users to carry forward unused monthly data allowance in response to public complaints that despite the high fees charged the speed and quality of services remain poor.

Ministry spokesman Zhang Feng said the speed-enhancing and price-cutting initiatives will be completed by October and will result in a reduction of roughly one-third of mobile traffic fees nationwide.