| Cell phones | |
|---|---|
| Jan 21, 2007 14:06 |   |
 | Can anyone advise me on how, where, and how much it will cost to have a cell phone in Beijing and Shanghai for a week? I'm travelling from the U.S. at the end of February. |
| Jan 21, 2007 19:08 | #1 |
| A cellphone or a SIM card??? |
| Jan 22, 2007 09:03 | #2 |
| I'll want to be able to call to the U.S. Is it better to buy a calling card or to buy a cell phone that I can use in China? Thank you for your help. |
| Jan 22, 2007 19:59 | #3 |
| You can buy a cheap mobile phone (the UK term is more common with English speakers than the US term, in this instance) for less than 500 RMB, say $50 and you can buy prepaid calls for 30RMB upwards. In some areas you might be asked to produce a passport to buy the phone. If you ask in some of the MANY specialist shops you should find someone who will rent you a phone for the week. |
| Jan 23, 2007 07:18 | #4 |
| In some other countries you can "rent a phone" at the airports, but I am not sure if you can do it in China. Anyway, in Shanghai you can buy a phone (new) for RMB350, that's about US$45. This is the cheapest, so this kind of phone doesn't have any multimedia, mp3 or anything, you just be able to call and use sms messages. Also you might need to buy a SIM card for the phone, this can be an extra RMB40 (US$5). If you want to call overseas you can buy a calling card (IP Card) for RMB28 (US$3.6 Face Value RMB100, be careful!), I think this will give around 25-30 minutes to call the US. There are 2 main mobile phone companies in China: China Mobile and China Unicom. Most of the cell phones use the GSM standard (Europe) but I think you can find some phones available from China Unicom that use CDMA (US standard). Anyway, I am not really sure if later it will work in the US. Hope this was helpful to you. |
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