WeChat to remain free for customers

The chairman at Chinese internet giant Tencent announced his company’s popular chatting application WeChat will remain free to use, Caixin reported. Ma Huateng said at an internet conference on May 7 that Tencent had reached deals with China’s major mobile telecoms to keep WeChat a free service. It was widely speculated that China’s telecom companies were pushing to have an additional fee structure put in place for WeChat, as the app reportedly uses a high volume of bandwidth. However, many analysts have pointed out that telecom companies have lost lots of revenue with WeChat as customers prefer chatting apps over high-margin SMS services.