A China Mobile customer service staff is playing his phone, in front of the desk.. The company is ranked world No.1 in terms of networks scale and number of registered users.[File]

"China Mobile gives me another math test, reminding me of my old school days." Mr. Wu, a China Mobile GoTone GSM service subscriber, felt like a pupil again when he was busy calculating how exactly China Mobile's new mobile fee packages work.

"How come they make it so complicated, I got driven nuts, it takes a mathematician's day of work to figure out how on earth these new packages can help save money."

For more than 300 millions of China Mobile subscribers, February 8, 2007 would have been revered as a holiday, because from that day on, users of China Mobile networks would only be charged with making calls, instead of paying for both incoming and making calls, as they have been accustomed to for years.

"China Mobile's icebreaking move heralds China's mobile telecom industry into a new age!" Most of that day's headlines wrote like this. Only a few days later, people began to find out that the world's largest mobile service provider's quasi-conscientious move was merely a synchronized PR campaign.

"In order not to make your incoming calls levied, several preconditions must be met," said Mr. Ruan Zongze, Vice Director of China Institute of International Studies, "you have to pre-subscribe to one of China Mobile new billing packages, which are prettily priced from 99 yuan ($ 12.78) to 299 yuan ($38.59). Under the new packages, you pay 99 yuan ($ 12.78) for a maximum of 280 minutes of making calls and you will be charged 0.35 yuan ($ 4.5 cents) for every minute beyond the quota. Free incoming calls could be enjoyed only after a minimum 99 yuan ($ 12.78) is pre-charged, Ruan picked up 99 yuan package to further explain, the money is not refundable no matter the 280 minutes baseline is met or not. That's an utter disregard of fairness and consumers' rights."

Many China Mobile users ironically metaphorized China Mobile's new fee packages to an IQ quiz, "there is no sincerity involved here," said a survey conducted by CCTV, "if China Mobile really wants to show its concern to customers, just slash the mobile charges in a clear-cut and transparent way." About 77.59% Beijing China Mobile users surveyed have their thumbs down towards new fee packages, an overwhelming 96.85% believe that there is still plenty of room for further fee deduction.

In face of such ubiquitous complaints from subscribers, China Mobile again adopted the stone-faced indifferent silencer attitude, a frequently resort sought by state-owned industry monopoly behemoths.

Another anecdote happened during Spring Festive in Wenzhou, a county-level city of east China's Zhejiang province, again conceived derogative significance to China Mobile's already lackluster corporate image.

In the aftermath of successfully achieving a record-breaking 5-million subscribers, China Mobile Wenzhou subsidiary architected a gala for celebration. To please the municipal government, China Mobile teamed up with Publicity Department of CPC Wenzhou Municipal Committee, upgrading the event to a dramatic government-backed evening show. All the tickets were sealed not for commercial sale, only China Mobile subscribers were entitled to book tickets, either by sending a SMS priced at 1 yuan ($0.13) apiece, or by pre-depositing correspondent sum of cash to tickets of equivalent value.

"Well, this is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen," bitterly smiled Mr. Xu, a China Mobile subscriber, after receiving a message of the aforementioned ticket-snatching methods from 10086, China Mobile's customer call-centre. "Don't you think it's really a disgusting way for such a well-known company to grab money under such a lofty pseudo-name?" asked Xu.