Getting Cell Phone Sim in China
 

We will be visiting Wuhan in July and my 16-yr-old son has a Huawei Honor that has slots for 2 sims. Last year I visited good friends in Nanchang and assumed that getting a cheap cell phone for my son (who will stay with his aunts and uncles for 1 month) would be easy, but it was virtually impossible. The cell phone companies wanted something like a $1,000 deposit.

This year, I am hoping I can do one of 2 things. 1. Buy a sim for my son that would work. Or, 2. Pay his uncle to get a second phone and then give the phone to my son. I am wondering whether either of these two options are feasible or whether there is some other option. Also, want to make sure that if son's uncle buys a cheap phone that the uncle wouldn't get in trouble in China. Any help would be appreciated.

Assuming he's getting a prepaid sim for his own phone, I have no idea what that deposit is about. You often need to make a non-refundable deposit if you want to make calls overseas, but that should be in the 500RMB range.

Real-name registration for sim cards is being enforced more rigorously now, but it's not a big deal. Don't know whether your son's age affects the registration, though.

There is no such deposit for a prepaid plan (other than putting money on the card). i get a new SIM every year when I visit. A deposit is asked for a postpaid plan. Maybe that was the issue.

The friend from Nanchang was a professor there so he wasn't unsophisticated. Don't know why we had such a difficult problem, but we definitely did and it was very surprising. Will check with relatives in Wuhan. Only thing I can think of is that possibly the phone companies didn't want to sell a prepaid phone to a then 15-year-old. If that was the case, I could simply buy it in my name. Again, I don't understand why I had the problem I did, but I unfortunately did. Additionally, the phone vendors did take seriously whatever regulation they were following. One of them was willing to sell us a very, stripped down, close to worthless phone that I decided not to buy.

After Post No. 4 above, I went to the next page on this forum and found reference to a real name registration policy in China. China Unicom stated:

"To comply with the “real name registration policy” imposed by the competent authority of Mainland China, all telecom operators in China who provide Mainland China mobile numbers are required to collect the personal data from their customers in order to comply with the real name registration policy. Since the Mainland China mobile number of CUHK’s “1C2N” (including the Mainland China mobile number of prepaid and postpaid services) are provided by the telecom operators in China, we have to comply with the policy.


Therefore, all CUHK’s 1C2N prepaid card users and new 1C2N postpaid (monthly fee plan) subscribers after December 15, 2016 would be required to comply with real name registration policy in order to activate or continue to use the Mainland China mobile number associated with 1C2N service. The use of Mainland China mobile number by postpaid customers during current contract period will not be affected. Furthermore, real name registration policy will not affect the use of Hong Kong mobile numbers provided by 1C2N services. You may refer to Office of the Communications Authority (OFCA)" See https://www.cuniq.com/hk/realname.html?country=hk_en

Is it possible that this policy or something similar caused the problems that we had in Nanchang?

Foreigners have no problem with real-name registration, except it takes a bit of time and a visit to the right telco office. As I said, though, perhaps a minor registering poses a different issue. Maybe they want the parents' ID, and that would be a problem in your case.

That applies to SIMs sold in Hong Kong, at least the old ones that came with a mainland number on top of the Hong Kong number (new ones don't anymore). Although the mainland policy it references definitely exists, and yes, it'll take a bit more time to register. Oh, and with foreigners only one passport can be registered to one voice SIM at a time, so it might become an issue if all of you want SIMs.

I have two numbers registered to one passport.

Assuming they can communicate. I got a SIM last trip, not a word of English and my wife wasn't being too effective as a translator.

So that might be a Shanghai-specific rule, then. I know back in January this became an issue for a group of exchange students I was helping out (they were all getting their SIMs at once and not everyone had their passports on them, because they were told by the group before them that up to 5 numbers could be registered to one passport, which was the case back before mandatory registration became enforced but isn't anymore).

889 "Assuming he's getting a prepaid sim for his own phone, I have no idea what that deposit is about."

Part of what may be confusing to some people is that last year, we didn't have a "double" sim phone. This year we have such a phone and are simply trying to buy the sim. Last year we were only trying to buy a cheap prepaid phone.

Ah, so last year you were trying to buy a "cheap" new phone at a telco office. Not surprising costs mounted.

If you need to go that route again, then just pick up a cheap working second-hand phone at a shabby mall or a simple new "Mom" phone at a phone shop. Then get the sim card separately.

Got son sim yesterday in Wuhan. Took 4 hours. Started with China Telecom and the fastest data they had that would work with his phone was 2G. ('found this out after a lot of trial and error) 'Went to China Unicom and got the sim for 108 y per month. Sim had to be bought in Uncle's name.