The three major operators gradually cancel roaming charges, and the era of comprehensive traffic competition is approaching.

　　China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom have recently announced that roaming charges will be phased out one after another. Roaming charges, which have existed for more than 20 years, will finally withdraw from the historical stage. People have reason to expect more "fossil charges" to gradually die out, so that telecom users can enjoy the reform dividend.

　　There is finally a timetable for canceling roaming charges.

　　The measures and time points for the three major operators to cancel roaming charges are different: China Telecom began to gradually cancel roaming charges this year; China Mobile will stop selling packages including roaming charges during the year; China Unicom will cancel the group roaming package from October 1st.

　　The reporter learned that the operator said that it would stop selling new packages with roaming charges, but the roaming charges of users who use the old packages with roaming charges will still exist. Users can choose whether to keep the old packages or choose the new packages without roaming charges according to their actual situation.

　　"It is expected that operators will cancel roaming charges for old users next year, but it is a very arduous task to sort out a large number of packages in use." Fu Liang, an independent telecom analyst, said.

　　What consumers care about is, will the gradual cancellation of roaming charges significantly reduce users’ communication expenses?

　　China Mobile, which has the largest number of mobile phone users, is a big beneficiary of roaming charges among the three operators, and it is also the most thorough one to cancel the package with roaming charges. China Mobile’s interim results in 2016 show that as of the first half of this year, the total number of customers of China Mobile reached 837 million, including 561 million 4G and 3G users and 275 million 2G users. Many 2G users mainly use local calls, and the proportion of roaming charges is not high, and the call duration is relatively short. At present, the threshold of 3G and 4G packages is generally higher than that of 2G packages, so 2G users who don’t often go to other places will get rid of roaming charges by changing packages, which will not reduce their overall expenses; 2G roaming users who often go to other places will greatly reduce their communication expenses after changing their packages.

　　Release more reform dividends for speeding up and reducing fees.

　　"As ordinary users, we hope that canceling the roaming fee package is just the beginning." Xu Jing, a citizen of Beijing, told the reporter that his current communication charging project also includes fees such as caller ID. "I saw on the Internet that the cost of caller ID service is very low, and it feels unreasonable for operators to continue to collect it after so many years."

　　The measures to cancel roaming charges are certainly worthy of recognition, but operators still need to constantly adapt to the market development trend, optimize their business structure, transform to a traffic-oriented business model, and regard innovation as the core task of enterprises.

　　It is understood that China Telecom has started to introduce full flow billing service. Xiang Ligang, a communication expert, believes that it is the general trend for operators to fully charge according to traffic, which provides consumers with more autonomy. "In the past, the call service and traffic in a package could not be mutually complementary, but charging according to traffic allowed consumers to choose and convert according to their needs, which improved the efficiency of package content."

　　Xiang Ligang said that in the future, the space for speeding up and reducing fees will be further expanded. With the upgrade of traffic services of operators and the increase of consumers’ demand for traffic use, the overall expenditure will not fluctuate too much, but the services enjoyed by consumers will be greatly improved.

　　(According to Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 24th, by reporters Gao Kang and Liu Shuo)