Report: China Unicom to Launch $6 WeChat Subscription Plan Later This Month

Late last week, we reported that an undisclosed Chinese telecom company was planning to offer WeChat-specific subscription plans. Now the details some of those plans are beginning to emerge. It appears that at least China Unicom has plans to offer a special subscription plan for users of the chat app, and a source at its Guangdong subsidiary has told Phoenix Tech that the plan there will enable users to pay 36 RMB ($5.90) per month in return for the privilege of using WeChat for free.

In other words, any and all WeChat usage is covered under that fee, and won’t count towards subscribers’ monthly data usage. The plan is unlikely to save money for all that the heaviest WeChat users, but those who use the app constantly or make extensive use of its multimedia capabilities could end up saving a little bit of money. And the telecom company is likely to make at least a little extra money from people purchasing the service who won’t really use the extra bandwidth but want to be sure their WeChat chatting is unrestricted.

None of this is been officially announced by China Unicom and thus remains strictly in the realm of rumor, but Phoenix Tech’s source says that the plan will be launched later this month. If that’s true, it seems likely that China Unicom could be rolling out similar plans for other locations around the same time, so we probably won’t have to wait long to see whether or not this rumor is true.

(Phoenix Tech via TechWeb)