CHINA Telecom has cut overseas roaming fees of up to 81 percent starting from this month as it seeks to improve its competitiveness in the domestic mobile market, the world's biggest, the telco said in a statement yesterday.

Cooperating with Vodafone, China Telecom has launched a new package for roaming users that cuts fees by 50 percent on average from previous level, the country's third biggest telco said.

Users who want to use the new package have to replace their SIM (subscriber identity module) cards at local China Telecom outlets, said its service hotline.

The new package supports overseas CDMA networks in 17 countries or regions as well as GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks in 258 countries or regions via cooperation with Vodafone, the statement said.

Users can expect to see roaming fees cut by over 70 percent overseas, including the United States, Japan, Germany and Singapore, according to the telco. China Telecom's CDMA (code division multiple access) users can save 81 percent as their calls from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland are now charged at only 1.99 yuan (29 US cents) a minute, compared with 15.89 yuan before.

Bigger rivals China Mobile and China Unicom charge users 3.99 yuan a minute for each call from Hong Kong to the mainland.

By the end of October, there were 38.6 million 3G users on the Chinese mainland, according to official figures.