China’s top three telecom operators — China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom — unveiled commercial AI token packages this past week. The plans enable tracking and billing AI usage through mobile phone accounts, alongside mobile data, SMS, and broadband services. Users may purchase individual or team plans.

On May 16, China Unicom’s Shanghai branch announced it would provide token services to local one-person company users, with each eligible to receive 30 million tokens for testing as well as half off their first plan. Plans start at 15 yuan ($2.20) per month with a 6-million token quota. A day later, China Telecom launched its trial of commercial token packages, with prices starting at 9.9 yuan per month for 10 million tokens. 

After piloting the initiative in several regions, including Beijing and the central Hubei and Henan provinces, China Mobile announced on May 20 that its token plans would be extended to users nationwide. Plans start at 5 yuan per month, and tokens can be used on AI applications provided by Chinese tech giant Tencent.

A token is the smallest unit of information processed by AI large language models. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, daily token consumption across all users in China averaged 100 billion at the beginning of 2024, jumping to 100 trillion by the end of 2025 and exceeding 140 trillion by March 2026 — a more than 1,000-fold increase in two years.

Industry insiders told domestic media that the products represent a shift by telecom operators from selling communication services to computing power and artificial intelligence services. Companies such as Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud have also launched their own token services.

“Currently, how tokens are charged and by what standards is really a ‘black box’ for users. There is no concrete benchmark for usage cost,” industry analyst Ma Jihua said in an interview with domestic media. “Whether charges can be made more transparent and cheaper in the future is key to the growth of this service.”

According to industry insiders, government entities and state-owned enterprises are currently the major customers of these token packages.

Pan Helin, an industry expert at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said, “These operators’ advantages lie in computing power and security. Their main customers are government agencies and enterprise clients, in particular state-owned enterprises, given their need to transition from digital systems to AI.”

Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.

(Header image: VCG)