While the China telecommunications industry has this year reduced fees for roaming calls, it has failed to introduced other planned policies such as a caller-pays billing system, an industry restructure and carrier switch with the same number.

This means there's still a long way to go before the Chinese telecommunications industry becomes open, transparent and fair.

In March, China cut the cost of out-of-town mobile phone calls by up to 80 percent in response to user complaints.

People who traveled around China had been charged long-distance and roaming fees for making mobile calls, which can reach up to 1.50 yuan (21 US cents) a minute - about 10 times the cost of a local call.

Now it charges users 0.60 yuan a minute for making calls and 0.40 yuan for incoming calls.

"China is the only country in the world to charge user-roaming fees across one network over different provinces," said Sandy Shen, a telecommunications analyst at Gartner Inc, a United States-based IT research firm.

"It's a natural process but the regulator needs to do more," said Shen.

China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier by subscriber, has dominated the market as the "mobile substitution" in China, industry insiders said.

In 2007, China Mobile Group's revenue reached 356.96 billion yuan, close to the combined revenue of the three other major telecommunications carriers, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Netcom. China Mobile's profit was 87.06 billion yuan, which surpassed the three others' combined profit of 45.09 billion yuan.

"It's an irresistible trend as mobile communications will replace the positions of fixed-line (communications)," Tebon Securities said.

China's fixed-line phone user base dropped last year for the first time since 1968, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information.