China’s big three mobile players announced that starting tomorrow customers on data packages can carry over their unused data allotments to the next month.
In stock market filings yesterday, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom said the new policy was to “further implement the policy requirements of the government regarding network speed upgrade and tariff reduction”.
The government complained in April that the country’s broadband networks were expensive and slow. After the telecoms regulator pledged to push industry players to reduce costs and improve speeds, the country’s three mobile operators committed in May to cutting data prices by 20-40 per cent, as well as improving network speeds.
All three said the new data policy, however, is expected to have some negative impact on revenue and net income.
“The company will speed up the construction of its high-quality 4G network, enhance the penetration in the 4G smartphone market, and provide better data service to subscribers in order to minimise the impact of the policy,” China Unicom said in its filing.
China Telecom said it aims to increase sales volume at lower unit prices to mitigate the impact of the concession, and China Mobile said it will continue to leverage its first mover advantages in 4G and encourage customers to increase their mobile data usage while moving to increase the speed and reduce charges.
A number of operators around the world have introduced data carry-over. Both T-Mobile and AT&T in the US launched it back in December and January, while Google’s US MVNO Project Fi allows data rollover.
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