Cell Phones in China

[crow610]

Could somebody give me the breakdown of cellphone service in China?

I am wondering

a) what is the initial cost for the average phone (startup fee + cost of phone)

B) most common plans that people get (free minutes + cost for additional minutes)

c) availability of broadband service on phone

Thanks

[woliveri]

The biggest cost of Cell phones/Cell phone service is the phone itself.

Mine cost 530 kuai (divide by 8 to get dollar amount) and 100 kuai for the minutes and setup.

That's for a basic phone. But with that you can make outgoing calls (for me it costs money) and have incomming calls (for me it's free).

The cheapest way to communicate is by text messaging. It is very cheap and you can text in Chinese (hit pinyin) or English.

So, now when my time runs out I just need to go down to the corner and buy more minutes. Not like the US where you have payments each month.

On the high end there are some expensive phones with a lot of ammenities. It depends on how much you want to spend.

[mr.stinky]

to avoid the 'expensive' models with all the bells&whistles....camera, video, games....i bought

a used motorola for 200 kuai (with original box and manuals). paid i think 100 for the SIM

card, set up, and first batch of minutes.

reset to english menu, can receive character texts, but send only pinyin. i think i can

switch to hanzi, but i'm not there yet.

basic service costs 25 kuai per month, incoming text free, outgoing text not worth mentioning

the cost. i think phone costs .09 per minute. service in kunming, and i believe much of

yunnan.

i buy a 100 kuai recharge card every 2-1/2 months. beats paying t-mobile $50/month.

[gougou]

Buying a phone can set you back a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand RMB, depending on which phone you want. The cheapest ones (new) should be about 400 RMB.

I take it that most foreigners use the prepaid card called Shenzhouxing. The SIM card also varies in price, depending on the number (more 8's means good luck, which comes at a price, more 4's means bad luck, which you'll get cheaper!) I think they're starting at 30 RMB. Afterwards, you recharge as you go along.

[crow610]

Thanks for the info!

[Harvey]

Piggy-back question.

My cell phone in Japan can take pretty high quality pictures, such as the ones on my blog right now.

http://www.japannewbie.com/

I can also email these images straight from my phone to any email account.

Do phones in China have similar functionality?

I'm kind of addicted.

[gougou]

Do phones in China have similar functionality?

No problems with the phones, you'll find plenty of models with cameras.

Whether you'll be able to email them depends on the provider your using, I guess, but if I remember correctly, this function is the backbone of roddy's blog.

[wiley]

Hey All,

I'm about to purchase a new cell phone too...anyone have the scoop on a good place to get used, but not stolen phones in Beijing? I heard there's a dirt cheap market on lady street, but that its essentially a market in stolen phones. The tri-band model I'm looking at is the Motorola L6, and I think I can get it for about 1100 RMB new, would love to spend less and get it used tho. Would love to hear any input folks had.

I'm also hoping to switch out SIM cards and use this phone internationally, primarily in the US. Has anyone had any success in buying prepaid SIM cards that work in the US? I'm skeptical that such things even exist, but I'm holding out hope, I hate using pay phones on trips in the US.

Thanks!

Wiley

[roddy]

re: Emailing. That functionality is definitely available. 3G isn't here yet, but 2.5G services such as Unicom's CDMA-1X can offer email and reasonable speed surfing if your phone can handle it.

The posting to weblog stuff I do all goes via MMS, which limits image size but can be set up on a pay-as-you-go Shenzhouxing account. I think you need a contract for proper internet / email access.

As for buying a legit second hand phone, just make sure you're getting the box, manuals, etc - I think that's all you can do. By the time they actually reach a shop the chances are nobody is sure if they are stolen or not.

[HashiriKata]

As for buying a legit second hand phone, just make sure you're getting the box, manuals, etc - I think that's all you can do. By the time they actually reach a shop the chances are nobody is sure if they are stolen or not.

Being a remnant of the prehistoric age, I don't use mobile phones but I wonder what the consequences of buying a stolen phone are. Apart from the legal side of things, can the phone still be used?

[HashiriKata]

Being a remnant of the prehistoric age, I don't use mobile phones but I wonder what the consequences of buying a stolen phone are. Apart from the legal side of things, can the phone still be used?

Since asking the question, I've been trying to find the answer for myself and have also discovered something else which seems relevant to some other questions posted here.

To my own question: Yes, the stolen phone can still be used, provided that it was not reported and was consequently blocked. So, if you lose your phone, you should report it to your service provider and they can block the use of that phone (unless the stolen phone is then exported overseas). Every mobile phone has a unique identification number called IMEI, which can be used to block the phone.

Easily being confused with the term "blocked phone" is the term "locked phone". Locked phone is a phone that has been locked to a particular service provided (network), so that you can only use that particular network. Now, if you want to take advantage of the cheap pay-as-you-go in China or whatever country you happen to be in, you'll need an unlock phone so that you can use any (local) network you like, which is invariably much cheaper compared to the "international rate" of the network of the country you come from. If your contract with your service provider is ended, you can actually have your locked phone unlocked by paying some fees. You can also unlock the phone yourself if you've got the correct info (from the net ). In trying to get to the bottom of the issue in the last few days, I bought myself a used phone and managed to unlock it without problems (it was locked to Virgin Network, UK). I'll try it in China with a local SIM card next time I go there, so what are the characters for "Shenzhouxing", anyone ?

[roddy]

The IMEI blocking only works effectively if all a countries carriers keep an up-to-date database of numbers. China does have one, but it seems to be more to prevent illegitimate imports, rather than the reselling of stolen phones.

神州行 are the characters. I've seen SIM cards for sale as low as 30-something yuan

[HashiriKata]

Thanks for replying and you're right, Roddy. What I was trying to say was only that once the stolen phone is used in another country, the service provider in the original country won't be able to do anything to block it, even with the correct IMEI. I also understand that even the IMEI itself can nowadays be faked by computer geeks, so it may not always be unique as it should.

[skylee]

Harvey, unless your phone is a GSM compatible model, I doubt it would work in China ...

But if you plan to buy a new phone in China then of course there will be no problem.

Mine is a triband+3G handset so can be used in China/HK/Japan.

[xianu]

I wanted to add a little note about the pay-as-you-go phone cards that i discovered the hard way on my last trip. I asked a lot of locals and they all either had no clue what to do, or had similar experiences with their phones.

I arrived at the Beijing airport and purchased a SIM card with a phone number that came with 100 kuai. It was China Unicom. Since I was only in the country for a short time, I just used my old US phone, unlocked, and replaced the SIM. It worked great. I then went on to spend the first few days in Xi'an. Unfortunately, since I was making a lot of international calls (missed my hubby and the puppy), and because I was in Xi'an and not in Beijing (so roaming charges of about 4or 6 mao a minute - I forget) I used up my 100 kuai kind of quick. When I went to purchase a new card, I discovered that since my number was a Beijing number, I could only use cards purchased in Beijing area to recharge my number. This was confirmed by several locals, one who had moved back from Tianjin to Xi'an and could not recharge his phone with cards bought in Xi'an, on China Mobile, as well as sales folk from what looked like legitimate China Mobile and China Unicom stores (not just your average stall). The only option was to have someone in Beijing purchase the card and call it in for me, to wait till I got back to Beijing, or to jsut get a whole new number/SIM card in Xi'an. Apparently, although these companies are all over the country, they operate regionally, so the money/plans are all local. Moral of the story, either buy extra cards before leaving a local area (like if you go travel), or make sure you have enough money on your phone before going.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have a contrary story to mine?

[gato]

. It was China Unicom. The only option was to have someone in Beijing purchase the card and call it in for me, to wait till I got back to Beijing, or to jsut get a whole new number/SIM card in Xi'an.

China Mobile's refill cards (神州行) work nationally. The problem you experienced may be unique to China Unicom. However, if one gets a SIM card in Beijing and use it in Xi'an, there will be a roaming charge.

[gougou]

However, if one gets a SIM card in Beijing and use it in Xi'an, there will be a roaming charge.

If you do travel a lot, you should consider getting their 漫游优惠, which for 3 yuan a month drives down costs significantly.

[cdn_in_bj]

Unfortunately, since I was making a lot of international calls (missed my hubby and the puppy), and because I was in Xi'an and not in Beijing (so roaming charges of about 4or 6 mao a minute - I forget) I used up my 100 kuai kind of quick.

When making international or domestic long distance calls, check to see if there is an ip prefix you can use to reduce your costs. For 神州行, you can use the 17951 prefix for international LD which lowers costs significantly - the last call I made to the US worked out to be less than 2 RMB/minute!

China Mobile's refill cards (神州行) work nationally.

This is my understanding as well.

If you do travel a lot, you should consider getting their 漫游优惠, which for 3 yuan a month drives down costs significantly.

This is a good tip. Just make sure you put in your request to activate the service a day before you need it. You can also cancel the service when you get back.

[johnd]

China Mobile's refill cards (神州行) work nationally.

I agree. More than one shop asked us where our SIM card came from, and they said that we couldn't top-up if it wasn't local. But we insisted, and bought the top-up card anyway, and it worked.