WeChat fee 'likely', says MIIT chief

China’s telecom regulator has confirmed it is planning to impose a fee on the free OTT app WeChat.

Miao Wei, the head of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told the financial publication Caixin Sunday that the demands by operators for the fee were “very reasonable” and it was “likely” to go ahead.

“The operators say ‘I maintain such a huge network, [but] I still need to invest and to operate. Apart from traffic [fees] there still should be these kinds of charges – that is sensible and reasonable,” Miao said.

Miao’s remarks follow weeks of speculation over the fee, which was reportedly discussed at a meeting between WeChat operator Tencent, the MIIT and operators in February.

But paid WeChat is a long from being a done deal. Miao and the three unloved state-owned operators will need to overcome opposition from WeChat’s 300 million users, not to mention 1.1 billion mobile consumers long disenchanted over pricing and services.

“The WeChat fee will become the most serious battle so far over China’s internet,” Chinese web entrepreneur Fang Xingdong today declared on Sina Weibo.

To win the argument Miao will have to do better than to merely claim that WeChat was “certainly not free” because users are already charged for bandwidth.  Consumers will be asking why they need to pay again if the bandwidth was already paid for.