Email on cell phone in China?
cricketbird
April 10, 2009, 11:24 PM posted in General DiscussionI'm currently in the US, but heading to rural China for 4-5 months in a few weeks, where there are no internet cafes or anything (I was there last year). I'd really like to be able to email people in the US. Can you get the internet on a cell phone? I'll happily buy a new phone and pay for a data plan. Thanks!
laobi
April 25, 2010, 02:48 AMYes you can get phone data plans, and it's really cheap too. Many people here simply buy a pay-as-you go card but I'm not entirely sure how much GPRS data that gives you for emailing and surfing. If you join a plan such as GoTone by taking your passport to a China Mobile Service Center you can get hooked up with the service. The basic plan is 88 yuan ($12). Make sure you add a GPRS data plan such as the 20 yuan ($3)a month which will give you something like 150 mega bytes free and cheaper per MB costs after that. For 100 yuan per month I believe you get a gig or two of GPRS. Make sure the data plan is active in your first month or you could get hit by per-MB charges that can really add up.
Your phone from the States might not work here as China Mobile uses a different system called GSM, which is more prevalent in Europe. Some US phones are capable of acessesing both systems. I believe the U.S. mobiles operate on the CDMA system.
China Unicom, the smaller cousin to China Mobile, operates on a more universal 3G network than China Mobile which uses its own 3G system. I'm not too, too familiar with China Unicom but you might be able to just pop in a new SIM card and your phone from home and you will be up and running.
Also,if it's been a year a whole year since you've been a lot might have changed. If you can get a landline, you might also be able to internet access (quan dai) and then buy a wireless router and your wifi phone should easily connect.
Hope this helps.
B