moondog

If not the exact same, they offer similar plans in other markets.

That having been said,
-Unicron regional subsidiaries operate with a considerable amount of autonomy
-plans change all the time (usually for the better)
-there is a wide array of starter packs (e.g. some come with a lot of cheap data); these are also constantly changing

allset2travel

Thank you, moondog.

I found the offerings (plans) are very confusing.
But I do like the plan mentioedn up-thread that you can keep the mobile number live at 6 CNY per month.

guear

I will be going to China next week. I will arrive at PEK first and stay for 3 days then go to Guangzhou for 3 days and then Hong Kong for 2 days. After reading this thread and few other threads, I have a few questions:
1. It seems any convenience store, newspaper stands or electronic store will sell the starter pack. Is this correct? I don't speak Chinese so I am not sure if it will pose any problem. I buy the sim and just pick a plan from my phone?
2. If the plans are regional, that means I have to switch plan every time I move to avoid high roaming cost. Is this correct? I probably will use it for data mostly.

moondog

Roaming isn't such a big deal unless you make a lot of roaming calls (not so common these days).

On such a short trip, you really needn't bother yourself with plans or fancy starter packs.

Buy a new SIM when you get to HK.

guear

Thank you moondog. I don't expect to make a call at all but I would expect a few hundred MB of data at each place for looking up maps and places.

igneous

Any tips for Chengdu? Ill be going to chengdu and Tibet in June, but I didnt see anyone mention anything about chengdu in here. All I care about is getting a sim with data

jackal

On Prepaid Data SIM Card's recommendation, I bought a "Cross Border King Dual Number Prepaid SIM" from China Unicom HK, since it avoids the GFW.

It comes with HK$80 in credit, which I thought would be enough to activate the HK$68 package with 500MB. However, upon reading the back, it says that when I activate it, I will be debited HK$18, which would then leave me HK$62, just a few dollars short of enough to activate that package.

So, question 1: Ideas on the best way to top up my China Unicom HK account?

PrepaidDataSIMCard says not to recharge with China Unicom vouchers, as they translate RMB1 to HKD1, leaving me with a bad exchange rate. I'm not sure I can do it online, though, since I won't have enough credit to activate data once I activate the SIM. Thoughts?

I'll be in China for 10 days and am a pretty heavy data user, especially as I'll be working remotely. My one experience with Internet in China (overnighting in PVG at the Hilton) was pretty poor--I could barely keep in contact with work even at an upscale hotel in a major business city. I was optimistic about the China Unicom SIM bypassing the GFW, but it's only 500MB (hopefully easy to re-up, though) and I may have trouble even getting that to work (as mentioned above). I tend to find myself needing about 1-2GB per week, lessened a bit, of course, if hotel wifi is reliable/stable/speedy.

So, question 2: alternate/backup solution for mobile data?

As I understand it, since I have the AT&T GSM model iPhone 6, I'm mostly limited to China Unicom as other carriers use CDMA for 3G, which would leave my phone seeing only 2G.

There's a lot of info in this thread re: picking up a SIM on the street, etc., but much of it seems somewhat dated. I'd appreciate any tips/updates/advice for someone with zero fluency in Chinese to remain connected for work primarily in Beijing and Xi'an.

I will have VPN access.

jackal

Answering my own question for future searchers.

Setting up the SIM was easy-peasy. I don't recall having to do much more than just insert it into my phone. I did have to manually configure the APN (3gnet), which was expected (it was mentioned on the prepaid data wiki and also on the packet the SIM came in as well as in a reminder text when I put the SIM in).

Since I was activating the service after the 15th of the month, I was only charged HK$9 monthly activation fee instead of HK$18, which left me with enough credit to then activate a 500MB data package.

I received 100MB of free data good until midnight on the day of arrival (it really is only until midnight, though--I put the SIM in after our 8pm arrival and got a text at midnight that my data had expired). That was enough to get me to the hotel for free, though, after which I could figure out other options.

Recharging online was quite easy--just visit http://hk.chinaunicom.com/tp and input your phone number and follow the prompts. Google Chrome's built-in translation is very helpful here for those of us who do not read Chinese. My U.S.-issued MasterCard was accepted without a problem. I couldn't do this from my iPhone (either Safari or Chrome--the transaction would generate some indecipherable pop-up after entering my credit card number), but it sailed through easily from my laptop.

3G on China Unicom was surprisingly ubiquitous everywhere we went. We took the train to and from Xi'an, and I had a little moment of panic when my service dropped to EDGE a dozen or so kilometers outside of Beijing, but it quickly returned to 3G and remained strong and usable the remainder of the 1,100-km journey to Xi'an and back. 3G service is also strong in all parts of the Beijing subway, which is helpful for navigating (well, other than the fact that Google Maps is 500 meters off of real life...).

The best thing was that access to every site I could think of going to was fast and unfettered. Bypassing the GFW really does make a difference in the usability of the (foreign) Internet. Interestingly, my external IP address was based in HK, so it really does actually tunnel the data to a gateway in HK.

It wasn't the cheapest option--at US$17.50/GB, it's among the most expensive data I've bought, but being able to freely browse and load websites that would inexplicably simply fail to load over our hotels' otherwise fast wifi connections was really worth a bit of a premium.

I didn't need to bother with this, although I ended up with a new and unused China Mobile SIM that someone picked up off the ground next to where I was seated and handed to me, thinking it must have been mine. I didn't bother inserting it, though, but I'll hang on to it and perhaps try it sometime in the future...

889

'I ended up with a new and unused China Mobile SIM that someone picked up off the ground next to where I was seated and handed to me, thinking it must have been mine.'

Call me paranoid if you will, but I would not insert that SIM card into my phone.

moondog

I'd have no problem popping it in one of my loaner phones (assuming it's still in its wrapper). I'm more careful about buying phones though; some of the fakes I've seen in shenzhen are rigged to do some pretty nefarious things (e.g function as spam servers).

JPDM

I don't find that to be the case. I use Google Maps all the time for driving and found it very precise whether in a big city like Shanghai or a remote area like the Gansu province.

jackal

You might be the only person for whom it is working, then:

https://polastre.com/2013/02/what-the-map/
https://productforums.google.com/for...ps/zVmRao1Im3w
http://www.quora.com/Why-are-the-sat...ffset-in-China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restri..._data_in_China
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...ffset-in-china

(These are just from the first page of Google search results on "google maps offset china" and match my experience, too.)

Yes, http://ditu.google.cn is fixed, but that doesn't help those of us for whom Chinese characters are little more than chicken scratches.

moondog

Google maps also works very well for me.

jackal

Weird. I'm gone now, so I can't take my own screenshot, but in both Beijing and Xi'an, the GPS dot showing my current location was consistently off by about 500 meters to the northwest, much like this:



If I did directions "from current location" to the place/business I was at (i.e., my hotel, restaurant, the subway station I'm standing next to, etc.), Google invariably thought I was a ~10-minute walk away.

No such issues with Apple Maps aside from the normal issues with Apple Maps that make it a second-tier resource.

889

I've also found the same offset in various Chinese cities. This is using downloaded Google Maps, not directly online, and GPS reckoning.