Phone card allows cheap Internet calls
9/6/2003 15:01
A phone card enabling very cheap Internet-based long-distance calls is
on sale in more than 600 convenience stores in Shanghai, today's Shanghai
Morning Post reported.
The card, PC2PHONE, charges 0.33 yuan (4 US cents)
a minute for calls to north America, one-eighth of the rate of Internet Phones
and one-twentieth of that of fixed-line phones, the report said.
It
allows calls to more than 300 countries and overseas areas as well as 200-plus
Chinese cities and areas, according to MediaRing (Shanghai) Ltd, general agent
of the phone card.
Su Tiebing, senior MediaRing official, said the
PC2PHONE service was launched by China Netcom Co Ltd after the telecom operator
obtained a license from the country's telecom authority.
As for the
challenge to the existing long-distance telecom market based on the cheap rate,
Su said he doesn't think the PC phone service will have that much of an
impact.
"After all, making PC calls is not as convenient as IP cards or
landline phones," he said.
The user must use a computer to access the
Internet and be equipped with microphones and earphones when dialing calls with
the card, he added.
But after consulting telecom experts, the Shanghai
Morning Post report said it would technically be easy to achieve convenience for
the PC call service.
With a few technical modifications, computers,
microphones and earphones would be not be necessary to make such calls, the
report said.
Jane Chen / Shanghai Daily news
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