China Mobile has started charging new broadband subscribers around 100 RMB for installation and debugging while raising the bar for free broadband service: as of October 7, free broadband service will no longer be provided for subscribers with 58 RMB cell phone plan or below.
By low and even no charge, China Mobile has piled up a massive subscriber base and topped fixed-line broadband subscriber quantity rankings. Till the end of August, China Mobile's wired network subscribers totaled 180 million, higher than that of China Telecom (152 million).