Starting from January 1, 2012, China Mobile Beijing has extended the validity period of its prepaid SIM cards, including electronic cards, from the current two years to five years.

At the same time, prepaid cards that were already purchased by users and are still within their valid periods will also be covered in this new period extension policy.

In addition, for prepaid cards that pass the valid period before January 1, 2012, users can go to China Mobile's business halls to re-activate the service if the due date is within one year. Starting from January 1, 2013, the company will no longer provide the re-activation service for expired prepaid cards.

There are two kinds of situations regarding the expiration of mobile fees in China. The first one is the expiration of prepaid cards; and the other is the money in the prepaid cards has already been recharged into the mobile accounts, but it has not been used before the expiration date. The new policy launched by China Mobile Beijing is applied to the first situation; however, the operator said it will take further measures to help users avoid the expiration of fees in their mobile accounts if they fall into the second group.

China Mobile is the first Chinese telecom operator to launch this policy to loosen the limit of validity period of mobile fees. The other two major Chinese operators China Unicom and China Telecom also expressed their intention to soon make corresponding adjustments.