OfficeGlenn

I am heading to Beijing on Friday for a week and thinking of renting a Wireless Hotspot device (My wi) for 7 days at:

http://www.3gsolutions.com.cn also known as Shanghai Net Farm Information Technology Co.,Ltd

Primarily so I can access to the internet from my iphone, and also use my laptop as I have one 4 hour, and one 5 hour bus ride as part of a tour I am taking.

The rental fee is pretty cheap (only $60 US for the week) but they also charge a $225 deposit which is refundable upon return of the equipment.

I tried doing some internet searches on the company, but it doesn't seem like there's a lot out there, which makes me worried I might not get my $225 deposit back from them.

Has anyone dealt with the company before? are they reputable? thanks.

moondog

While 60 bucks per month may well be cheap by US standards, that's rather expensive over here. You might want to check out ebay and search using "unicom".

OfficeGlenn

Just came back from my trip to China and ended up renting a mywi hotspot device from www.3gsolutions.com.cn for a week.

Cost was $70 for a week (in addition had to pay a $225 deposit which was refunded upon return of the device) payable through Paypal.

Device was delivered to my hotel, and setup was easy. Very happy with the device. Pretty much had reception everywhere I went (Beijing proper, Great Wall, Chengde, and Tianjian).

Came with two batteries which last about 6 hours each.

Found it much more convenient then just buying a sim card, as it allowed me to use my laptop, ipad, blackberry and iphone, and allowed me to remain productive on some very long bus rides.

Return of the device was straight forward (left it with my concierge), and refund of deposit was processed within 2 days.

Very highly recommended.

jiejie

Thanks for getting back with a first-hand report. This could be of use to others.

31570324

How could it? Its to expensive. 150MB for RMB380? WOW.
Why didn't put a chinese sim in the iphone and activate tethering? This way you can use the internet connection with your computer and your iphone at the same time and it costs only a fraction of RMB380.

tycosiao

$60 US could get me 3 months of 3G with Unicom?

It could be useful for those who are just plain lazy

How come refund was not done immediately but in 2 days?

moondog

Yes, the OP was taken for a ride (I don't feel guilty about stating this here because I called it out in post #2... before he took the plunge). There are many parallels between this thread and our favorite "guided tour" topic.

31570324

Maybe he was just joking because who would take his laptop, ipad, blackberry and iphone on one week trip to china? And above of that he take this router with him, this make one suitcase just for electronic. Must be a fake

OfficeGlenn

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9800; en) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

was limited to 1 day prior to my tour starting and I needed to have reliable internet access for work purposes so for me I was willing to pay for the convenience factor.

I didn't want to spend my time running around trying to find a store to purchase a sim card and equipment and find an appropriate plan. I also don't speak mandarin.

I wanted something that worked out of the box with all of my devices and the rental of the wireless hotspot device was perfect for my purposes.

In addition my iphone is carried locked and wouldn't be able to take a foreign sim card, so tethering or creating a hot spot with my iphone wouldn't have been an option. Even if it were unlocked I doubt the battery would have been able to last more than a couple hours.

Refund was processed in 2 days since the equipment need to be returned via courier to the company. Once they received it back they processed the refund.

All in all I was satisfied with the services provided given what I required for the trip.

I suspect many people travelling to china may only have one unlocked device in which they need internet access in which case purchasing a sim card on their own may be viable. You can also purchase a sim card through the same company if you prefer, I would assume at a premium to what you could get on your own, but once again its the convenience factor of having it all done and ready for you when you check in at your hotel.

31570324

Nobody adjudge you that you like to pay a lot to much just for your convenience. But you wrote $60 is cheap, and its not. Just for anybody who plan this in the future: $60 for 150MB and 1 week use is definitely to much, you can get a sim card at least at every corner and lots of new phones support tethering. Or you can do this with a laptop, too.

tycosiao

Glad you enjoyed their services, however there are cheaper and reliable alternatives out there.

Taiwaned

It is also a perspective issue.

When I first arrived in China, I thought pretty much everything was cheap in comparision to Vancouver. Now I think other places are expensive.

It also depends who pays. If the company pays then why not go for convienence over cost. Time costs money.

One thing for sure in my personal case. What takes a few minutes to do back home, over here could take hours due to language, chinese way of doing things, line ups etc. For someone that is here only for a few days, convience may trump cost.

After saying all that - there are other ways and man that is expensive!