Roaming charges by the Chinese mobile industry have come under fire with increasing complaints of overcharging prompting the government to intervene for reduction in the unreasonably high charges.

As per the Beijing Consumers’ Association, China Mobile and China Unicom, the two leading mobile phone operators in China, are charging unreasonable roaming charges (domestic) that should be reduced or lowered at least, as reported by People’sdailyonline .

Plans for a hearing in Beijing for the later half of January 2008 have been made by China’s National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Information Industry to revise the upper limit for domestic mobile roaming charges.

The consumer association alleges that the frequency of complaints against the cost of these services is unrivalled. For long, roaming tariffs fixed by the government have come under criticism in China. Despite the caller-pays scheme being replaced by the two-way charge system that charges both callers and receivers for calls, there has been no significant change in the roaming charges for years. Previously, both callers and receivers were charged by the mobile operators.

The figures from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) in 2007 showed a 13.6% decline in overall charges. Increasing subscriber complaints compelled the government in 2007 to urge mobile service providers for cheaper subscriber packages inclusive of free incoming calls. Mobile service providers justify additional charges as the cost for transfer of cross-province calls from one local operator to another.

With various developed countries in Europe, North America and Asia doing away with roaming service fees, China is taking the matter more seriously. Moreover, a majority of China’s 539 Million mobile users pay around 33%-50% more for outgoing or incoming calls outside their home provinces.

The opinion of industry experts is for scrapping roaming charges reasoning that roaming barely costs the carriers anything more than the fee calculation process for their provincial branches.

A Research Analyst at RNCOS said, “No other mobile industry in the world other than China charges users roaming service fees in one network over different provinces. Also, the roaming charges are cannibalizing the income of China’s telecom industry. Overcharging has robbed the people of excitement and therefore, reduction is necessary for the Chinese mobile industry to enable them to purchase mobiles without concerns about high charges in future.”