A woman walks past a billboard of China Mobile, one of China's top three telecom operators. (Photo : Getty Images)
China's top three telecom operators--China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom--have failed to fulfill their promise to raise the broadband speed and lower the Internet service fees in the country, a month after they made the announcement.
In addition, no definite timetable or any specific measures were given to raise the broadband speed and lower the service fees, according to a report by Chinese News Service.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) had pledged in May to improve the broadband speed for Internet users in major provincial capitals and municipalities, from the current 9 megabytes per second (Mbps) to 20 Mbps.
The MIIT's call was quickly answered by the country's top three telecom operators, as China Telecom and China Mobile have promised to lower their data fees by around 35 percent by the year-end, while China Unicom also presented a list of service packages favorable to consumers, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Experts said that the promise may not have been fulfilled due to the telecom companies' concern about their falling revenues.
"To raise broadband speed and lower service fees quickly should exert a considerate influence on the revenues of the three operators," Ma Jihua, a telecom analyst, told China News Agency.
Ma said that the problem was further complicated by a slowdown in the growth of the Internet and mobile Internet users in the country, based on the three operators' reports of new users in April.
This was supported by a report by the International Data Corporation, a technology research company, which showed that China's smartphone market slowed for the first time in six years in the first quarter of 2015.
