China Unicom has announced plans to launch additional protections for 3G mobile phone Internet fees by limiting the monthly Internet fees and the monthly traffic for users.

The company stated no matter what kind of 3G packages users have chosen, their monthly mobile phone Internet fees will be capped at CNY500. At the same time, if the users' monthly mobile phone Internet traffic is over 15 gigabytes, their data functions will be closed during the month, but the functions will be automatically reopened the following month.

China Unicom explained that in normal situations, the monthly mobile phone Internet traffic cannot be over 15 gigabytes and the two measures are meant to prevent users from extraordinarily high mobile phone Internet fees, which are mostly caused by viruses.

At present, China Unicom's users can enjoy free downloads from the company's 3G portal website and only contents outside this website will be charged for traffic fees.

There have long been rumors that China Unicom might be Apple's partner for bringing the iPhone onto the mainland. With these service fee caps, China Unicom is potentially tightening the amount of money that Apple can plan to earn via users of China Unicom's 3G mobile phone services.