End of outdated telecom fees shows leaders' reform resolve

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.