Cell phone rental
 

I'll be in China for a couple of weeks in July and trying to find out the best way to get a cell phone for use while there. I know I can rent something here in the states via Amex or AT&T wireless and take it with me and/or use phone cards in China to cut down the expense of oversease calls. I would like to have a cell with me for emergencies though as we will be travelling to four different cities - any suggestions? By the way, I don't really want to buy an unlocked phone and use local Sim cards as I rarely travel to Asia and my current cell works well in Europe (where I tend to do most of my overseas travel) Any help appreciated!

Should be easy to rent a cell phone at the airport. I know at Pudong in Shanghai to the
right of the international exit area there is a cell phone rental booth/place.
I bought a couple re-fill cards from them. The prices are pretty cheap for rental.
Now there are a lot of used cell phones for sale in China at cheap prices so you could probably buy a cell phone and a sim card with time on it for less than $40.
That's an option.
Then you have an unlocked GDM phone you can use in other places.

Buy, don't rent
 

If your phone works in Europe, it'll work in China. Just make sure it's unlocked and can accept third party SIM card.

Bring it to China, buy a local mobile number, usually 5 star hotels will sell it in their business center for RMB$120 which includes RMB100 of time. Also, at airport (at least in Beijing, can't recall seeing in Shanghai but ask) you can get SIM card.

It will work IDD, local, etc. and you can buy top off cards in RMB$100 denominations. Number is good for at least 6 months, once you start topping off, it will extend to 12+ months.

Make sure you get number that is good nation-wide and not just shanghai. I know Shangrila Hotel business center used to have it.

www.pandaphone.com will deliver to and pick up from your hotels in some cities in China.

I know you said that you don't want to buy, but purchasing a SIM really is the easiet thing to do. If you're flying into PEK China Mobile sells the SIM cards at the airport for 280rmb ($35 usd), or you can pick one up in town for less - but that is a pretty easy way to do it.

Can you tell me how much they charge for the same SIM in the city?

I think I paid 100rmb for the China Mobile SIM card. For 500rmb the guy gave me a 1) phone (used), 2) two batteries (one new, one old), 3) battery charger, 4) SIM card & 5) 105rmb talk credit.

I'm happy with my purchasem getting all of that for about $63 usd

Considering everyone seems to be suggesting that I get an unlocked phone and buy the Sim cards in China, then that's what I'll do ^ . This may sound like a silly question, however, if if I buy an unlocked phone from say AT&T (now Cingular) take it with me, and change the Sim cards in China do I use the same phone number or does the number/service come with the new card?

The number is associated with the SIM card.. not the phone.
Make sure to get a tri-band or quad band phone.

for more gsm info.. go to http://www.gsmworld.com/

Just make sure your phone works at GSM 900/1800 MHz, some Tri-Band phones only work at 1800 MHz. I think both ChinaMobile & ChinaUnicom use GSM 900 MHz.

tmk, unicom is cdma only.

also, for anyone that's interested, several months back, i deposited one of my spare sims into the ft community (i.e. lent it to visiting fter, but never bothered to get it back). so, pm me if you like and i will ask him to mail it to you. it is a beijing number that does not contain any 4s or 2s.

Unicom has both CDMA & GSM (at least in Shanghai). IIRC its GSM services is called "Ru Yi Tong".

Thants correct. I just opened up my mobile phone bill to see the
providers I used in Beijing. I have China Unicom and China Mobile
in GSM.

Additional note: If you have a Verizon service, you can roam in CDMA
in Beijing. I think the cost is about 49c/minute. incoming and outgoing.
We had problems dialing international, but local and incoming worked just fine.

This in excellent point as I just found out. I have a Nokia 3100 which is a tri-band, but only GSM 850 not the GSM 900 required to work in China. Thanks for all the suggestions ^

China Unicom used to operate both GSM and CDMA. But recently China Telecom acquired China Unicom's CDMA business. So there are 3 carriers on the market: China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom. And they all launched 3G services. As a new player, China Telecom offers the best rate in order to expand market share. As for cell phone rental services, just google "cell phone rental China" or "cell phone rental Beijing". There will be a bunch of choices.

So, with one of these SIM cards, how much would a 5-minute call to the USA be?

I was told the 230RMB China Mobile card could call the US for about 120 mins.
Am not here for v long, so might not push that mark.

Calling USA with local mobile phone in China
 

From another fellow FTer:

The US international access code is 001.

Also, when calling from China, I use a code that saves me money (doesn't save much but you can get a couple more minutes out of a calling card). The code is 17951. Put in those numbers before the int'l. code.

So from China to US, I dial 17951 + 001 + areacode + number.


17951 will only work on a cell phone. The saving is actually rather significant. Calls from a cell phone to USA/Canada was RMB 8.00/min. With 17951, it's only RMB 2.40/min.

You can use 17951 to make any international call, not just to USA. The pattern is:
17951 + 00 + Country Code + Area Code + Local Number

00 is the international access code from China. That is needed in any international call. 1, in the example our friend gave above, is the country code for USA (and the same for Canada).

If you are calling from a land line, try using 17909. The pattern is the same:
17909 + 00 + Country Code + Area Code + Local Number

However, 17909 doesn't work everywhere. As far as I know, it works in most of the major cities, like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc.

Both number (or IP Access Code as they called it) could also be used to call in-country long distance calls. For example, if you are calling a Shanghai number from Beijing, or vice versa. The pattern in that case is:
17951 or 17909 + City Code + Local Number

For example, Shanghai's city code is 021, Beijing 010, Guangzhou 020, etc.

Although my data might be a bit stale given the pace of change in China, I was only charged 1.2 per minute for 17951 calls to the US.

In case the answer wasn't clear, each new prepaid SIM card you buy will have a different (and new) phone number.

LOL...when I indicated "from a fellow FTer", I was actually referring to you.

I kept a copy of your great advice and I'm sure your info is definitely up-to-date. All the more reason to use 17951.

Cool (and thanks for the reference). In any event, assuming you were quoting me directly, 2.4 was probably the number at that point in time (because I make a habit in referring to hard evidence), but as of ~1 year ago, 1.2 was definitely in effect (I checked my phone bills on a regular basis). Moreover, Unicom had much cheaper rates on offer (i.e. close to Skype), but I never went that route due to quality concerns.

In closing, the idea of international voice charges alarming accountants is rapidly disappearing because there are so many other ways to stay in touch these days (including data roaming services that lack the ability to discriminate against voice traffic). Due to the fact that most phone companies are cognizant of these facts, they have created means to stay competitive (i.e. rates should continue to trend towards zero). That having been said, they've reserved a special place in their hearts for the market segments that don't know/care.

At the risk of diluting my concluding paragraph (above), I feel compelled to highlight a personal example of the "old school":

-in spite of my numerous attempts to educate her (to the extent that I paid for many phone cards which she never used), my own mother frequently ran up $200+ phone bills just to converse with me,... in spite of that fact that she could do so for free if she were to pony up $30/month to the dreaded Comcast
-she sees no value in the latter and is also convinced that computers are impossibly complex
-only people like her should even dream of "renting" cell phones in China; the rest of us should continue to play it smart

China Mobile now provides international calls with special prefix 12593 in some cities. In Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, if you have a local China Mobile SIM card, you can have low rate of 0.4 yuan/min for calls to US and Canada, no other charges.:):)