Chinese telecom carriers are once more in the headlines for bad-tempered competition.
This time China Mobile has been accused of trying to disrupt China Telecom's network in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province.
Four China Mobile employees were caught calling China Telecom network with more than 200 cellphones at the same time last Monday.
Local police said the 3G phones had been running for at least one hour on average. China Daily reported.
Bizarrely, they were caught by a local China Telecom executive, Xu Weijie, who said he found them when he was looking for a parking space at Wenzhou University.
“They were deliberately interrupting our signal. This is not the only time they have sought to interfere with our signal in densely populated areas,” he told China Daily.
The China Mobile employees claimed they were testing the capacity of the China Telecom signal tower in the area as some customers had complained it was weak.
Zhang Bing, manager of the China Mobile office where the four employees work, refused to comment Sunday.
China Telecom, a new entrant to the mobile industry, has become China Mobile’s most aggressive competitor this year, racking up 11 million new subs in the first half of the year.
It is not the first case of bad blood between Chinese carriers. China Telecom employees have been caught trashing China Unicom equipment, while rival teams are reported to have come to blows on several occasions.