Shanghai Mobile will formally initiate the commercial use of EGPRS, which is expected to boost online surfing speeds for mobile phones.

A representative from Shanghai Mobile says the EGPRS network makes the online speed up to four times faster than GPRS. At present, most of the newly launched mobile phones on the market support EGPRS and China Mobile started to sell customized EGPRS mobile phones from April 23.

Shanghai Mobile said that the traffic fee for EGPRS is the same with the existing fee for GPRS.

EGPRS is a form of EDGE which enables data connections at speeds up to 474 kb/s. EGPRS opens up possibilities for connecting to data networks on mobile phones, making it faster and more convenient to stream video and download larger files.

Shanghai Unicom, which competes with Shanghai Mobile, had previously launched EGPRS service for its own mobile phone users.