China Telecom slashes mobile internet charges

China Telecom Corp has slashed its mobile-telephone internet fee by up to 75 per cent to lure users to its third-generation service, according to the company's Beijing subsidiary.

The company said it cut the standard monthly internet usage fee to 0.5 fen (0.57 HK cent) per kilobyte from 2 fen per kilobyte. It has also offered a new tariff plan for low-spending users, charging 50 fen a day for 3 megabytes of internet traffic.

'China Telecom needs to add 3 million users per month for the remainder of the year to meet the target of adding 30 million users this year,' said Credit Suisse analyst Jeffrey Tan.

'But the company has only 270,000 3G handsets, which is short of an earlier target of 20 million available for sale.'

China Telecom started offering more free internet usage in all its 3G plans this week than current 2G plans in an effort to push subscriptions to the new service.

The 49 yuan 3G monthly plan includes 100 megabytes of internet usage, compared with 20 megabytes for the comparable 2G plan. The 189 yuan 3G plan comes with 200 megabytes as against 50 megabytes in the 2G plan.