Tencent President Liu Chiping yesterday said the company's WeChat software will remain free, in response to netizens' complaints about the possibility of being charged for using the mobile chat application.

Liu made the remarks at a roundtable discussion held at the three-day Boao Forum for Asia, which ends today.

The app's large user base will offer room for cooperation with telecom operators, Liu said, adding that there will be no need to charge people.

Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei said earlier that telecom service providers may be allowed to impose charges on the WeChat service. The remarks triggered strong protests from netizens, who accused the country's telecom operators of imposing unfair fees in a drive to maximize monopolistic profits.

With its free voice messaging and photo-sharing features, WeChat has become immensely popular among China's mobile users. According to Tencent, WeChat users surpassed 300 million in 2012.

Some business insiders said the fees might be imposed on app service providers, rather than users, as many had suspected. But some feared that the rising costs would eventually be passed on to consumers.

Telecom service providers allege that WeChat and other over-the-top content service providers should pay for generating excessive data flows, sometimes leading to traffic jams in signaling channels.

However, some observers said the arguments about data traffic belied the true conflicts between the ascending popularity of OTT services and dwindling usage of messaging services offered by telecom operators.

The tremendous popularity of WeChat has apparently dealt a blow to similar services developed by China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, the country's top-three telcos.

Moreover, free OTT services have allowed users to bypass traditional communication modes like phone calls and text messaging, two prime "cash cows" for telcos, said Yan Xiaojia, an analyst with Analysys International.