The long-distance roaming fee for mobile phones will be cancelled, why is the traffic still divided into local and national use?

"I still have traffic left in the package last month, and I went to other places, and the bill incurred an out-of-package traffic fee." I believe that many people have encountered this situation and blamed it on data roaming fees.

However, is there such a thing as roaming traffic? Why do telecom operators need to distinguish between local traffic and national general traffic? Why is the unit price different after the traffic usage of some packages is exceeded? Chinanews has sorted out and investigated this.

Recently, China News Network Weibo launched an opinion survey on local traffic and national traffic of mobile phones.

Recently, China News Network Weibo launched a report on "Mobile phone traffic is still divided into local traffic and national general, what do you think?" ".

 Status: Distinguish between local traffic and national traffic

From October 1 this year, the three major operators will fully cancel the domestic long-distance and roaming fees for mobile phones, which means that in the future, in China, the call tariffs will be the same in the country, and there will be no longer a distinction between local and foreign long-distance distances. However, in terms of traffic, many packages still distinguish between local traffic and national general traffic.

"The local traffic is not exhausted, and the national traffic is not enough." Recently, many netizens have reported to Chinanews that they have encountered this situation when using mobile phone traffic. Ms. Zhang, a Beijing mobile user, told Chinanews that she went to Dalian for a few days this month, and although there was a lot of traffic in the mobile phone package, most of it was local traffic in Beijing, so she could only use the traffic tightly after going to Dalian, and she didn't dare to post photos.

There are many such examples, in a recent survey launched by Chinanews.com on local traffic and national general traffic, Weibo netizen @徐小同 said: My number in Hebei, people in Henan, the traffic in the monthly package is 2GB, and the traffic in Hebei Province cannot be used, and the phone bill has to be charged every month.

 Why do we need to divide local traffic and national general traffic?

With the acceleration of population flow, it is difficult for many people to stay in one area for a long time, and it is very troublesome to change mobile phone numbers, because many online accounts are bound. In this case, why do the three major operators still need to distinguish between local traffic and national general traffic? Chinanews contacted the relevant people of the three major operators.

China Unicom explained that China Unicom Group has launched a national traffic general package, and local companies will launch some local traffic packages according to local characteristics, mainly for people who do not travel frequently.

China Telecom said that in order to meet the differentiated needs of users, China Telecom provides diversified traffic products by region, time, content, terminal type, etc., as well as a variety of preferential forms such as promotional and free traffic, to provide users with more choices.

A staff member of China Mobile who is aware of the situation said that the network resources in various places are unbalanced, and the traffic consumption is also different, and the provinces with less traffic consumption than the price may give away the surplus local traffic to consumers, or sell it to consumers at a low price, which produces local traffic and national general traffic.

Xiang Ligang, an expert in the communications industry and chairman of the Zhongguancun Information Consumption Alliance, said in an interview with Chinanews.com that in fact, local traffic is a kind of preferential traffic, and the price is cheaper than national traffic, but now the user's idea is to use the national traffic and pay the price of local traffic.

"At present, this is basically impossible, but the future trend is that the price of traffic will continue to fall, but it will take time." Xiang Ligang said.

 Why is the price of out-of-package traffic inconsistent?

Chinanews also found that even if it is the same telecom operator and different packages, the traffic fees beyond the package are inconsistent. For example, the national version of China Unicom's 4G combination package, after the domestic traffic exceeds the package limit, it will be billed at 0.2 yuan/MB; However, China Unicom's 4G combination package traffic value version, after the domestic traffic exceeds the package limit, it will be billed at 0.27 yuan/MB.

China Telecom is the same, and the price of its Lexiangjia package is 0.0001 yuan/KB; Enjoy the 4G package, and the data beyond the package will be charged at the price of 0.3 yuan/MB. The price of data outside China Mobile's package is charged at the price of 0.29 yuan/MB, which is uniform across the country. (Note: The three major operators have free preferential measures for off-package traffic, and will not be introduced one by one.) )

China Unicom explained, "Because the price of the local traffic package is low, the price of the traffic beyond the package will be relatively high." China Telecom said that the price inside and outside the package is the difference between preferential tariffs and standard tariffs, and the package is actually a preferential combination, which is also a common practice of international telecom operators.

Xiang Ligang believes that this is a marketing method, buy more and use more to get discounts, and many industries are using it. "For example, it's not inappropriate to set a different unit price for a user who uses 10GB of data per month and a user who uses 1GB of data per month than a user who uses 1GB of data per month." Xiang Ligang said.

However, the above-mentioned survey initiated by Chinanews shows that as of 17:00 on the 15th, 84.8% of netizens believe that the price of off-package traffic should be the same for the same operator; 11.9% of netizens support the diversification of data packages and prices of telecom operators.

 The decline in traffic prices is still the trend of the future

Chinanews learned in an interview that more than one telecom operator denied the claim that there was roaming in traffic. The above-mentioned China Mobile insider said that there is no roaming fee for traffic, but only to distinguish between local traffic and national general traffic, and the unified price of national traffic is the general trend, and the traffic price will continue to fall.

However, Xiang Ligang believes that the future traffic pricing trend may be the same as now, with certain distinctions to meet the needs of different users, "If there is a price for national traffic, it may be unfair to those users who use more traffic every month, because they can't enjoy the preferential price of local traffic." ”

There are various signs that the downward trend of traffic prices is still the trend of the future. In March this year, the three major operators announced the results since the speed increase and fee reduction, involving mobile traffic, China Mobile said that between 2014 and 2016, the average unit price of China Mobile's mobile phone Internet access fell by 63.5%. China Telecom said that in the past two years, China Telecom's mobile phone data fees have fallen by 57.4%. China Unicom said that China Unicom's average traffic tariff level in 2016 fell to a new low, a decrease of more than 48% compared with the end of 2015.