It's a great news that the three major operators cancel the roaming fee and also reduce the price by at least 30%. We all know that the service standards and service awareness of the three major operators are really poor, which is much better than that of the bank. The cancellation of the roaming fee means that there will be no domestic and provincial traffic in the future.
The industry also has different views on the cancellation of roaming fees. According to the media, for the three major domestic operators, the revenue of traditional voice business has declined, the traffic revenue has replaced and increased rapidly, and the long-distance roaming fee led by voice business has gradually been in an awkward situation.
With the continuous upgrading of technology and network, 4G users have seen explosive growth and rapid decline in roaming costs. From 2012 to 2015, China Mobile's dau values (average monthly mobile Internet traffic per household) were 36m, 72m, 155m and 339m respectively, increasing nearly 9 times in three years. The growth rate continued to climb. In the first half of 2016, the mobile dau value reached 589m, a year-on-year increase of 112%. Moreover, in 2015, the revenue of China's mobile data business exceeded that of voice business for the first time, reaching 347.5 billion yuan, accounting for 52%.
According to the financial report of China Mobile, the total number of 4G users reached 429 million, and the 4G penetration rate reached 51.2%; in the first half of the year, the traffic revenue reached 19.5 billion yuan, an increase of 26.7% year-on-year, surpassing the traditional business revenue for the first time. The traditional voice business revenue has lagged behind the traffic revenue, and the cancellation of roaming fee has become the general trend.
In foreign countries, there is no roaming fee in Japan; the European Union decided to cancel the roaming fee between member countries from June 2017; Russia, India and other countries are also planning to cancel the roaming fee.
However, there are also media reminders that roaming fees will still exist in some scenes. Media said that although there is no concept of "traffic roaming fee" in current traffic services, there are not a few cases of traffic roaming.