China mobile bills: plans, top-up, autopay, suspension

A mainland number carries a monthly charge, and the charge sits on top of a filed document. Under the Telecommunications Regulations (State Council Order 291, revised 2014 and 2016), Article 30 requires an operator to publish the services it offers, their scope, the tariff standards and the time limits, and to file all of it with the provincial telecom administration.

The number itself is the other post: Getting a phone number in China; this one covers the plan filing, the top-up routes, autopay, and an unpaid bill.

The plan is a published entry, not a shelf price

Since 2025 the industry ministry has told carriers to keep a tariff-publication zone on their web halls and official apps, listing every plan on sale, and the notice for the second quarter of 2026 repeats the instruction and adds a second confirmation step when a service is ordered (工信部信管函〔2025〕187号, 2025-07-29; 工信部信管函〔2026〕258号, 2026-08-05).

China Mobile’s zone is at 10086.cn/fee, read 2026-10-12. Every plan there is a record. The fields are the same on each entry: a plan number (方案编号), the monthly charge, the dates the plan goes on and off sale, its validity term, the route to cancel it, the stated liability for breach, the voice and data allowances, the rates outside the allowance, and a field naming the provinces where it is sold.

Three details matter. The validity term is usually three years, renewing for another three if neither side objects, and the breach-liability field reads 无, none. The sale-channel field is often “online channels, with any offline rollout decided province by province”, so one plan number does not mean one availability. Eligibility can be narrow — the 99-yuan entry says 限35岁及以下客户办理, customers 35 and under — and the 299-yuan entry’s province field lists a single province. Data outside the allowance starts at 5 yuan per GB on the cheaper tiers and falls to 2 or 3 yuan on the dearer ones; voice runs 0.1 to 0.15 yuan a minute.

Where the money goes in

The carrier’s own web hall sets out the steps. Enter the number, pick an amount from 10 to 3,000 yuan or type one, then pay through online banking or the carrier’s own payment account. Top-up cards are a second route, and the site keeps a top-up order record (网上营业厅 help page, 充值交费, read 2026-10-12).

The endpoints the carrier prints on its pages are the web hall, the mobile web hall at wap.10086.cn, the China Mobile app, the SMS hall on 10086, the voice self-service line on 10086, self-service terminals, and physical halls (same page, read 2026-10-12).

One provincial company publishes a longer list: online banking; a card-binding service that tops up by SMS instruction to 10086 or by calling a dedicated number; 24-hour self-service halls; scratch and top-up cards; bank counters; credit-card direct debit; telephone banking; cash at halls and agencies (话费缴纳渠道, no printed date, read 2026-10-12).

The carrier also runs a payment account separate from the phone balance, and money put into it stays there until it is moved to the bill. One documented route: send the amount to 10658888 in the form HF plus the figure (中国移动手机支付 help, read 2026-10-12).

Autopay is a regulated consent

The rule covering autopay on a phone bill is written for auto-renewing services generally. A service that renews or debits automatically needs the user’s consent, cannot be switched on by a pre-ticked box, must be reminded by SMS or push five days before each renewal, and must offer a convenient way to cancel during the service (工信部信管函〔2023〕26号, 2023-02-06).

The carrier’s product for this is 话费代扣, formerly 话费自动充值. A page on its domain describes a low-balance rule — a balance below 20 yuan triggers a 50-yuan debit — funded through Alipay, WeChat or the carrier’s wallet, on ticking an agreement. I read that through a search index of the page; the page itself would not render, so the 20 and 50 yuan figures are single source, unverified.

A credit-card direct debit appears as an ordinary payment channel on the provincial page above. Separately, the ministry’s second-quarter 2025 notice says the carriers upgraded their data overage caps with thresholds starting at 100 yuan, set through the hotline or the official app, so a large bill cannot build up unnoticed (工信部信管函〔2025〕187号, 2025-07-29). The 2026 notice adds that 42.1 percent of the telecom complaints it received that quarter concerned tariffs or charges, and tells users to read the tariff, the contract term and the cancellation rules before ordering (工信部信管函〔2026〕258号, 2026-08-05).

When the money stops

The regulations set a default timetable. Late payment can carry a penalty of 3 per mille of the amount owed per day. Past 30 days beyond the agreed payment date an operator may suspend service; if the customer has not paid the arrears and penalty within 60 days of that suspension, the operator may terminate service and pursue the debt. Mobile operators may agree different payment deadlines and methods with a customer, which is the clause that lets a carrier run its own clock. After payment, suspended service must be restored within 48 hours (Telecommunications Regulations, Article 34, revised 2014 and 2016).

China Mobile’s own clock, for one provincial company, is published. From 2025-11-01, a number newly taken up — including one acquired by transfer — that sits suspended for arrears for a full 60 days without clearing the arrears and penalty will have service terminated, meaning the account is closed. Within 90 days of the closure the original customer may apply to reopen the number; after 90 days the company may put it back on sale (关于新入网移动用户号码欠费停机销户相关周期的公告, published 2025-09-30).

Keeping a number without using it has its own product, and two provincial pages word the charge differently:

• 停机保号 costs 5 yuan per number per month, a rate in force since 2007-07-01, with no handling fee to suspend. In the month of suspension the fee is pro-rated by day at twelve times the monthly rate divided by 365; a number suspended for a whole calendar month is charged the monthly rate; in the month of resumption the suspension fee is charged by day and the plan fee starts again from the resumption date. There is no maximum suspension period while the account is not in the suspended-and-in-arrears state; once it is, the customer has 30 days to clear the account before the system marks it for pre-closure (停机保号, 福建, read 2026-10-12).
• A second province words it differently: where the suspension crosses a calendar month and the whole month is suspended, only the suspension fee is charged, and otherwise no suspension fee applies that month. The tariff’s validity there is one year, with notice required before a change at the end of the term (停机保号, 上海, read 2026-10-12).

A number can also arrive with a history. The ministry’s 2026 notice says its service for recycled numbers covered 258 apps, reached more than 14.35 million users and handled more than 850 million requests to unbind old app accounts. A number you take up may have belonged to someone else, and one you release returns to the pool.

Changing the name on a number

A number is registered to a document. The ministry’s 电话用户真实身份信息登记规定 (Order No. 25, issued 2013-07-16, effective 2013-09-01) defines registration to cover both opening a number and transferring it (Article 3). If someone else handles the formalities, the operator must see that person’s document as well as the customer’s and record both sets of details (Article 6); a foreign citizen’s passport is accepted (Article 7). The operator checks the document and records its type with the name, number and address on it (Article 9), and must refuse service where a customer will not show a document, uses someone else’s, or presents a forged one (Article 10). Records are kept two years past the end of service (Article 11), and customers registered before the rules took effect were given a route to complete registration (Article 20). The anti-fraud law adds the enforcement layer: a cap on how many numbers one person may hold, a right to refuse a suspicious application, later identity re-checking, and suspension of a number that fails it (Anti-Telecom and Online Fraud Law, passed 2022-09-02, Articles 9 to 11).

One consequence is easy to miss: because a transfer counts as registration, it also counts as a new number under the carrier announcement above, which reads 新入网（含过户）— newly taken up, transfers included.

How I checked this

Figures were read on 2026-10-12 unless the source prints its own date. Rules come from the current text of the Telecommunications Regulations in the national administrative-regulations database, Order No. 25, a 2023 ministry notice, and the quarterly service-quality notices for the second quarters of 2025 and 2026, read on the ministry’s site. Carrier figures come from 10086.cn and its subdomains: the tariff zone, read in a browser because the plan records load after the shell; the top-up and payment-account help pages; two provincial suspension pages; and one provincial announcement, read from the JSON file the page loads, because the page body is empty in the HTML. The table is the first screen of entries in the zone, not the whole list. Where two sources word the same product differently, both appear above.

What I could not check

• The carrier’s autopay rules. The page is on 10086.cn and its title is 中国移动自动充话费, but it renders by script and returned nothing to me. The 20-yuan trigger and the 50-yuan debit are single source, from the search index of that page, and I could not date them.
• China Mobile Hong Kong. The queries that lead here include Hong Kong bill payment and payment by cheque. That is a separate company from the mainland carrier; its bill page returned HTTP 466 to me and a browser request landed on an unrelated site. I verified nothing about its methods, its autopay form, or cheques.
• How a transfer is actually done. Order No. 25 says which documents must be seen. No first-party page I could load describes the current process, which parts run in the app and which require a hall, or what happens when one party cannot attend.
• Whether the suspension fee reaches passport holders. The 5-yuan rate comes from provincial pages written for domestic customers; nothing states whether a number issued against a passport is charged the same.
• The whole plan list. I read the entries shown on first load and did not page through the zone, so the table is a sample.
• The carrier’s own arrears contract. Article 34 lets mobile operators agree their own terms, and I could not load the subscriber agreement showing which terms a current customer is on. The 3 per mille and the 30-day and 60-day figures are the regulation’s defaults.