One rule

Quota points do not necessarily equal tokens.

The useful metric is:

real spend / real tokens consumed * 1,000,000

For Shanghai Telecom's reported ¥1 for 250k quota points, the optimistic quota-point cost is ¥4 per 1M quota points. If a model burns 2 quota points per token, the effective cost becomes ¥8 per 1M tokens. If it burns 10 points per token, it becomes ¥40 per 1M tokens.

Use the telecom token calculator and log model, input tokens, output tokens, quota before/after, latency, errors, expiry, and renewal settings.

Never treat quota points as an unlimited free API. Test with public, non-sensitive prompts first.