China Mobile (CHL) has announced plans to issue TD-SCDMA numbers in eight Chinese cities from April 1.

The eight Chinese cities are Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Qinhuangdao. Users in these cities can subscribe to the 3G service by purchasing a mobile phone number prefixed with 157. The fee for local outgoing calls is CNY0.4 per minute and it is free for answering incoming calls. China Mobile said that it would offer users 50% discounts for the service during the trial commercial period.

The numbers to be issued will be used for both social terminal service testing and trial commercial use. China Mobile will first invite about 20000 clients from different industries to participate in the testing and offer them data cards worth about CNY2000-4000 as well as a CNY800 subsidy. It will also initiate the trial commercial use of TD and push it to the market.

In addition, China Mobile also launched three packages for voice service, which are priced at CNY28 (for 150 minutes calls), CNY58 (for 350 minutes calls) and CNY88 (for 600 minutes calls).