3G usage fees, they are a pain and most don’t like having to fork out large amounts of cash to be able to surf the net via their chosen smartphone, but over in China some lucky customers are seeing a price drop in 3G fees.

According to an article over on Bloomberg, the Chinese company that sold 100,000 iPhone 4 units in 4 days, China Unicom is falling behind in China’s wireless customer market and to attract most custom has dropped the minimum fee for their 3G service by over half.

Apparently China Unicom customers can now pan their signature to China Unicom’s 3G service for as little as 46 yan per month, which is roughly $6.90 whereas before the 3G service cost a minimum of 96 yan according to China Unicom spokesperson Wen Baoqiu.

Even though China Unicom has an exclusive agreement with Apple over the Chinese iPhone, the Beijing based company still hasn’t managed to close in of rival China Mobile when it comes to grabbing 3G customers. In October China Unicom added 1.1 million subscribers compared with China Mobile pulling in 1.7 million in the same period.

By the end of October, China Unicom has 11.7 million customers while China Mobile had 17 million. So it would seem that having the iPhone on their network isn’t really enough to get customers to swap networks, but with China Unicom dropping their 3G fees will China Mobile follow suit?

China Unicom in a statement has said, “The new 3G tariff packages greatly reduce the consumption threshold, while adding more minutes of local calls, and more flexible billing.”

Good news for customers over in China, but what about the rest of the world could we see a cut in 3G service charges in the future from other mobile operators to entice more customers?