Domestic roaming service charges by the country's two dominant mobile phone operators are unreasonable and should be scrapped, or at least lowered, the Beijing Consumers' Association said in a statement yesterday.
Complaints about the cost of such services were among its most frequently received, it said.
The statement said most of the country's 539 million mobile subscribers pay between 33 and 50 percent more for calls made or received outside their home province.
Mobile service providers have said the additional fees are charged to cover the cost of transferring cross-province calls from one local operator to another.
Experts, however, have said that new technologies have lowered operational costs, with some going as far as to say that roaming calls incur no additional cost to operators.
In addition, the abolition of domestic roaming fees has become a worldwide trend, they said.
Professor Zeng Jianqiu of the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said: "Many developed countries in Europe, North America and Asia have already scrapped roaming service fees."
The National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Information Industry have said they plan to hold a hearing in Beijing later this month to reset the ceiling price for domestic roaming charges.
Five consumers, including one from Beijing, will attend the hearing alongside representatives of the service providers, industry experts, scholars and government officials.
The Beijing association said that it has already selected two of the candidates, both of whom are familiar with the telecoms market and rights protection laws, while a third representative will be chosen by the China Consumers' Association.
A spokesman for the Beijing Consumers' Association, who asked not to be named, said: "The hearing will offer a platform for different interest groups.
"The process is in itself a step closer to our goal."
China has two mobile telecom service providers - China Mobile and China Unicom.
Following a growing number of complaints from subscribers, the government last year called on mobile service providers to provide cheaper packages for subscribers, including free incoming calls.
They previously charged both the caller and the receiver.
Last year, overall charges fell 13.6 percent, according to figures from the Ministry of Information Industry.
China Mobile's Shanghai branch last week launched a new package, which reduces the cost of making and receiving roaming calls by up to 76 percent.
Source: China Daily/Xinhua
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