1. Telecommunications Carriers

Generally speaking, there are two categories of data that will be obtained by the telecommunications carriers: （a） personal data of users, which data will be provided by the users when they apply for telecom services to be provided by the telecommunications carriers; and （b） billing data recorded in the telecommunications networks, which data will be recorded by the telecommunications carriers during the course of their providing different types of telecom-related services to the users, such as, domestic calls, domestic long distance calls, mobile calls and domestic IP calls. The legal requirements that the telecommunications carriers shall comply with in retention of data are varied, depending on the nature of the data obtained by them:

（i） Users Personal Information

The telecommunications carriers shall record the personal data of the users in registration cards and enter into agreements with the users when they install or transfer the telephone lines for the users^〔1〕. The registration card shall be completed by each of the users, and the personal data of the user （such as, name of user, installation address, employer, ID card number, etc） shall be verified by the telecommunications carriers. Further, the telecommunications carriers shall retain all records of the users （including telephone line installation records） and related agreements for a period of not less than 5 years after the date of termination of each of the agreements.

（ii） Billing Data

The telecommunications carriers shall, during the ordinary course of their providing different types of telecom-related services to the users, such as, domestic calls, domestic long distance calls, mobile calls and domestic IP calls, retain the original billing data for no less than 5 months^〔2〕. There is no explicit law or regulation in the PRC which governs the scope of the billing data to be retained by the telecommunications carriers. Based on our anonymous verbal consultation with an official of Ministry of Information Industry of the PRC （"MII"） , "billing data" shall include dialing and dialed numbers, numbers of the sender and receiver of messages, time when a call or message is made, duration of call or message and calling tolls or message charges.

Further, in the event that there is a material telecommunications outage, the telecommunications carriers shall retain all data related to the outage for at least 6 months. Again, there is no legal definition as to what will constitute a "material telecommunications outage" ; however, based on our anonymous verbal consultation with an official of MII, in practice, a "material telecommunication outage" usually refers to an outage of telecommunications services which affect more than 100,000 households in an hour.

Pursuant to Article 19 of the Telecommunication Services Rules （电信服务规范） , if a telecommunications carrier fails to comply with the above-mentioned requirements on data retention, the telecommunications regulatory authority may request it to rectify its wrongful within a specified period, failing which a fine of more than RMB10,000 and less than RMB 30,000 may be imposed on the telecommunications carrier.