Zhou Jian is one of the lucky ones in Yingxiu, an area in Sichuan Province that was devastated by the earthquake on 12 May. He wasn’t hurt, but he knew his family in the neighboring province of Shaanxi would be emotionally distraught until they heard from him.

Zhou turned to China Mobile’s ”Life Line”, a quick and efficient service that allowed survivors of the quake to contact relatives outside the stricken area. When a China Mobile operator passed on Zhou’s information to the number he had provided, the young woman in the city of Xi’an who answered spoke few words. Her sobs told of her great relief.

China Mobile’s “Life Line”, which can be reached by dialing 100865, has successfully connected 3,686 people in the earthquake-stricken area with their relatives.

The free service uses China Mobile’s satellite phones to send messages from the disaster area to China Mobile operators elsewhere. They have handled 196,762 calls from across the country since the 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck. The vast majority of calls were from concerned people seeking information about the earthquake. More than 25,000 callers were searching for news about relatives in the quake zone.

Sun Shuhang is one of the more than 100,000 soldiers on the front line, and he too was able to send a message to his family using China Mobile’s satellite phone service. When the hotline operator reached Sun’s father he expressed his gratitude and his pride. “Yes, my son is a soldier. He’s doing this for the people. I’m relieved to hear he’s safe. The whole family is proud of him,” he told the operator.

China Mobile knows stable and reliable communications is one of the pillars of the rescue and recovery operation, and is doing everything possible to make things normal again.

Relative News