One morning last week a long queue formed outside Beijing's Long Distance Telephone Building. When the doors opened at 7.30 people rushed in to buy the next product in the mainland's telecommunications revolution - the Internet phone (IP) card.
The cards, for 100 and 200 yuan (about HK$93.16 and HK$186.32) offer domestic and foreign rates for less than a half of those for fixed-line calls.
They went on sale last week for the first time in Beijing through two of the three companies allowed to sell them, China Telecom (CT) and Jitong Communications. The third, China Unicom, plans to sell them from early next month.
The arrival of this new product is, like many benefits of the mainland's reform, a belated legalisation of something already widely available, even though illegal or semi-legal, and marks an important milestone in the increasing competition in the telecom market.
Internet telephony has been available for at least two years, through individuals or companies buying the necessary software and installing it in their computers. It has been mainly used for international telephone calls, for which fixed-line prices have been outrageous.
Along with call-back services, it forced China Telecom to cut its international prices from March 1. A one-minute call to the US previously cost 18.4 yuan and to Europe, 20.7 yuan. This compared with 4.8 yuan for Internet calls. China Telecom has since cut the cost for both to 15 yuan a minute.