China's three major telecom carriers – China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom – have started selling AI token plans directly to consumers, marking a shift toward treating AI computing power like a utility billed similarly to monthly phone services.

Starting May 16-17, the Shanghai branches of all three operators launched token packages.

China Mobile offers 400,000 tokens for 1 yuan through a partnership with Chinese internet giant Tencent, with payments also supported through phone bills.

China Telecom offers personal plans starting at 9.9 yuan (about $1.40) per month for 10 million tokens to 49.9 yuan for 80 million. For developers and small businesses, professional tiers range from 39.9 yuan to 299.9 yuan covering 15 million to 150 million tokens per month.

China Unicom priced its entry-level personal plan at 15 yuan for 6 million tokens, with business plans starting at 198 yuan.

The concept of token as a billing unit for AI has gained rapid traction in China. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that daily token usage across the country surged from 100 billion in early 2024 to over 140 trillion by March 2026 – a thousandfold increase in two years.

The carriers describe these plans as a strategic expansion from traditional data traffic businesses to computing businesses. Under this model, AI agents consume tokens, tokens pull computing power, computing drives data traffic and eventually, traffic lifts the value of the carriers' network infrastructure. Additional revenue is expected from enterprise services such as uplink bandwidth upgrades and cybersecurity.

Industry analysts note that while carrier pricing is not cheaper than cloud providers' API rates, this is the first time China's telecom giants have packaged tokens as standardized, carrier-grade retail products bundled with connectivity and security.

If all three operators scale nationwide, the distribution channel for large language model API services could partially shift from cloud platforms to the telecom ecosystem, potentially reshaping China's AI service market.