So picture this: you’re a Chinese smartphone user with, like almost every smartphone user in China, a limited data plan. You get 500 MB of data per month — for example — as part of your package and you’re charged a per-MB rate for every bit of data you use beyond that. It’s straightforward enough, but if your phone doesn’t contain its own internet data usage tracker, it’s pretty easy to go over your usage limit without even knowing it. That can be an expensive pain. And soon it should be history.
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) recently published a new regulation that requires mobile carriers to warn customers before they’ve hit their usage limits. This service will be free, and is intended to make mobile phone usage more convenient for customers.
Smaller provincial telecom operators have reportedly already put this into practice, and the big national telecoms are moving to do so soon. Well, sort of soon. The regulation stipulates that they have until July 1 of this year, though, so until then you may still want to keep a close watch on your data usage.
[Dahe Bao via Sina Tech]