China Telecom slashes international rates

China Telecom, one of China's "big three" telecom operators, launched its new Tianyi international card Wednesday along with UK giant Vodafone.

By using the new card, China Telecom customers will benefit from lowered international roaming tariffs. The reductions are lowering costs by about 50 percent on average, according to a China Telecom press release.

China Telecom's international roaming tariffs adjustment covers 17 CDMA roaming countries and regions and nearly 258 GSM roaming countries and regions.

After adjustment, roaming tariffs for countries like the US, Japan, Singapore, Germany and France will be cut by around 70 percent, even reaching a ceiling of 81 percent.

Before the adjustment, China Telecom users in the US needed to pay as high as 12.89 yuan ($1.93) per minute to call the Chinese mainland.

Hong Kong and Taiwan users are not left out by the cuts, as from now on, calls to the Chinese mainland will cost 1.99 yuan ($0.30) per minute from Hong Kong and 0.99 yuan ($0.15) per minute from Taiwan, according to the announcement.

"In the long run, fees for long distance calls are set to be reduced due to the massive emergence of online communication tools," said Dai Chunrong, an industry analyst with Beijing-based China Securities.

Han Tao, a Chinese international student who now studies in Germany, said that the international roaming tariffs were prohibitive for students like him.

"I'm now using a program called 'nonoh' to call home. It only costs me 0.015 euros per minute," said Han, noting the gains made by chatting tools such as Skype, QQ and MSN.

This ever-increasing competition is also forcing wireless operators to cut down prices. In August, China Mobile already reduced its international roaming fees by as much as 60 percent on average, with China Unicom following suit, said Cai Ling, an industry analyst with CIC Research Center.

"It is not surprising that their competitor China Telecom also moved to gain a share of high-end consumers (who tend to spend more on mobile services and use international roaming services more often)," noted Cai.