China's mobile service operators will eliminate charges for domestic roaming and long-distance calls as data services become their major source of revenue. The fees will be canceled as of October 1, said Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology Chen Zhaoxiong yesterday.

China began a campaign aimed at faster and more affordable Internet connections in 2015 after users had long complained about roaming fees, introduced 23 years ago.

The official deadline is an ultimatum for the operators, which had unveiled plans to phase out the fees last August.

The ministry had made solid progress toward the target with joint efforts by the big-three carriers: China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, Chen said.

Their efforts witnessed stellar growth in China’s 4G mobile service users from fewer than 100 million in 2014 to 770 million, more than half of the world’s total.

Carriers are vying for these consumers, unveiling competitive data plans for them to browse more content on handsets, wherever they are.

On February 24, China Unicom introduced a plan called “Ice Cream” with no monthly cap on call time and data at a price of 398 yuan (US$58), while its rivals rolled out schemes featuring high data quotas.

In 2016, some 9.36 billion gigabytes of data were consumed through mobile Internet use, up 123.7 percent year on year, as users consumed 98.3 percent more data on average monthly, official data showed.

The fee reduction would account for only a single-digit percentage of mobile carriers’ revenues and could be counteracted through increased service consumption, said Fu Liang, a telecommunications analyst.