Bowing to the pressure, many of the continent's leading mobile phone operators agreed to reduce the price of their wholesale connections.

Vodafone promised to cut the average cost to its customers for calls in Europe by as much as 40 per cent.

Compared to European operators, "the global roaming charges imposed by China Mobile are still too high for most domestic users," said Guo.

The analyst estimated the revenues generated from the global roaming service accounts for less than 5 per cent of China Mobile's total revenue.

According to financial reports of the Hong Kong-listed company, the firm's global roaming service for GSM (global system for mobile communications) covered 203 countries by the end of 2005, compared to 184 in the previous year.

And its global roaming for the GPRS service covered 98 countries compared to 73 in 2004.

Many Chinese travelling overseas have found the roaming service too costly in the past and many chose to send text messages to keep in contact with people at back at home.

Even so, sending a text message when travelling abroad usually costs a user more than 1 yuan (12.5 US cents). At home, it costs only 0.1 yuan.

The aggressive price cuts could help China Mobile increase the amount of calls made by its subscribers when using the global roaming service, said Guo.

The cuts would not have a big impact on Unicom's business as it has a much smaller subscriber base, he added.

By April, China Mobile had 265 million subscribers and Hong Kong-listed China Unicom had 132.7 million subscribers.

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