Roaming fees may drop in near future

gzlaser

GIVING your buddies a call during the Spring Festival can strengthen your friendships. But mounting roaming fees charged on cross-provincial phone calls may dampen your friendly spirit.

Fortunately, the communication authorities have said they plan to hold a hearing in Beijing later this month to reset the ceiling price for domestic roaming charges.

Domestic roaming service charges by the country's two dominant mobile phone operators are unreasonable and should be scrapped, or at least lowered, the Beijing Consumers' Association said on Monday. Most of the country's 539 million mobile subscribers pay between 33 and 50 percent more for calls made or received outside their home province.

Currently, China Mobile users typically pay 0.60 yuan per minute to receive calls if they travel to another city.

Mobile service providers say the additional fees are charged to cover the cost of transferring cross-province calls from one local operator to another.

However, experts have said that new technologies have lowered operational costs. Some say that roaming calls incur no additional cost to operators. Fee breakdown

How do I pay long distance fees when my phone is roaming? Suppose you go to Shanghai from Beijing where you subscribe to a cellphone service:

A. Besides basic local call expenses and roaming fees, you have to pay long distance fees if you call places outside Shanghai. However, you don't pay long distance fees if you call Shanghai subscribers.

B. Besides basic local call expenses and roaming fees, you have to pay long distance fees if you receive phone calls from Beijing or other cities outside Shanghai. But you don't have to pay long distance fees if the call is from Shanghai.

Money-saving tips

Use an IP (internet telephone) service to save on long distance fees.

Some special subscription fee packages provided by carriers can reduce roaming expenses.

International policies

UK: There're no roaming fees charged in the UK, no matter whether you're calling in England or Scotland. But you'll be charged if you go to other countries in Europe.

US: In the US, roaming fees will be charged if you make a call while you are outside your local or national carrier's coverage area. The amount of the fee depends on the carrier. Some carriers provide customers with free roaming minutes every month.