China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom successively launched Token packages between April and May this year, entering the market with low-price slogans like “99 yuan for 10 million tokens” and “15 yuan for 6 million tokens”, attempting to package computing power as a product similar to “data plans”. A reporter from the National Business Daily tested and found that simply typing “hello” consumed about 50,000 tokens (roughly RMB 0.125 yuan) on China Unicom Cloud; asking AI to organize a comparison task consumed nearly a million tokens; in less than an hour, the 6 million tokens in the 15 yuan China Unicom Cloud package ran out. Calculated, developer Wang Changlin (pseudonym) estimated that if he switched his daily usage to an operator plan, his monthly cost would be about 1,000 yuan, while his current Zhipu GLM Pro version costs only 149 yuan per month — a difference of five to seven times. Another developer, Cheng Nuo (pseudonym), stated bluntly: “The price is more expensive than domestic open-source models, and the capability is not as good as top foreign closed-source models. There is no reason to prioritize operator plans.” The reporter also visited business halls in Chengdu, Shanghai, Beijing, and Chongqing and found that many frontline staff knew nothing about their own Token packages: a China Unicom staff member said, “It can’t be processed yet, it’s just a concept for now,” while a China Telecom staff member asked, “Do you want to install broadband?”
The background of operators collectively entering the Token market is that their main businesses are under pressure: In 2025, the revenue growth of the three major operators all fell below 1%, and net profits collectively declined in the first quarter of this year; mobile data traffic usage grew by 17.3%, but traffic revenue fell by 3.1%. Omdia senior analyst Xia Maosen pointed out that there is a general capability gap between the operators’ self-developed large models and those of cloud vendors’ leading models, causing them to serve more as “computing power channels” rather than price setters in the Token industry chain. Communications analyst Ma Jihua believes that for Token packages to truly succeed, at least two prerequisites must be met: AI applications deeply migrating to the mobile terminal, and operators and agent vendors establishing a cross-platform token conversion system — neither of which has been achieved yet. In his view, the operators’ long-term opportunity lies not in simply selling tokens, but in combining networks with computing power, transitioning from “channel services” to “capability services”; Omdia research manager Zhan Molei believes that “scenario services + hardware + Token packaging” is a feasible path for operators to differentiate themselves.