For mobile phone, you can buy them From Mobile phone shops, GOME home appliance store and Da Zhong home appliance store. the price is quite similar. but I like to go Da zhong and Gome than seperate small mobile phone shops. because GOME and Da Zhong are two main home appliance chain stores, and they are all over the city.
For Mobile service company, I recommend china mobile (CMCC), this mobile carrier has good signal coverage, good service, good products and package.
In Beijing, we did not have many China mobile service center years ago, so it was easier for people to buy mobile phone sim card in local mobile phone shops, they sell mobile phone, also sim card. The price can be varies, If the number sounds good, such as with number 6 or 8, it will be more expensive than the number with 4. Because In Chinese culture, number 6 means good luck, 8 means good fortune, but 4 means death, that is why if the number with 6 and 8 but without 4 would be more expensive, and the other reason we used to buy sim card from local mobile phone shop is we can choose the number from the big list, usually these small shops has many numbers for you to choose, so we have many choices, and easy to find some number we like. But it’s the history now.
Now our time, China mobile has built up many service center in the town, so it’s very easy for you to find one, then you can buy the sim card there, because they have ATM machine, you can choose the number from their list, easier than you check the number from the books, and enter your preference about the number, such as number end up with 6 or 8 or 5, if they have it, it will be listed on the screen, if they do not have the number to match your preference, then you have to enter different preference, so you still can have many choices, and the benefit to buy the sim in servicer center is, all these numbers are sold one price. So if you are lucky, you can find really good number with really cheap price.
What type of number do you need?
As China mobile has 3 different products for their customers. so let me tell you which one is good for you.
One is called Go Tone (Quan Qiu Tong) for business people.
it’s good for business people, makes a lot of phone call, use it to access the internet, but also travel around the world, because for this product, you can have roaming service, internet service, low price phone call package, also good customer hotline service, make the phone call first, then pay at end of the month. And for this product, you must pay monthly fee.
The next product is Easy own (Shen Zhou Xing), good for visitors.
It’s good for people who only stay in Beijing for short period of the time, they just buy the sim card, and charge the prepaid balance the this number, then make phone call, when balance goes to zero, then you cannot make any phone call before you charge more prepaid balance (you can easily buy these prepaid card in every newsstands), and they do not charge you monthly fee, you can call from inside China to anywhere in the world. Also SMS to many countries, and you can trash the sim card after you spend all your balance. So they make it easy for short stay people.
Last product is M-Zone (Dong Gan Di Dai), for students.
Its mainly for the students, they have SMS package, so you can send many sms with little price, low price phone call, but not good for business people or short stay people, because no roaming service, nor good internet service for business people, as short stay people would use more voice call than SMS, and you cannot trash the sim card when you leave the country, because you must go to customer service center to stop the service. So it’s not good for visitors either as they do not have time for such things.
After all. For business people, Go Tone is good choice. For visitors, Easy own is good choice.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Good Frank, this is helpful. Can I use my Chinese phone and phone service when I travel to Japan and U.S.? How do I keep connected? In other words, how can I continue to receive calls messages to my chinese phone number?
As Go Tone User, you just need to call 10086 from your mobile, and follow the instruction and swith to real person hotline service, and double check if your roaming is abled or not, if its abled, then you can make phone call anywhere around the world. but for Japan, since they have CDMA network, not GSM, so you must be sure your phone has 3G, then ... Read Moreyou should be able to make phone call in Japan too.
How to make good deal calls:
From China to call overseas, you dial 17951+country code (US:001)+area code(Hawaii:808)+phone number.(example:1795100180811111111)
When you are travelling overseas and call back to China. you dial "**139*86mobile number#"。its the best dial to call back to china.(example:**139*86139111111111111#)
But, if you are lazy, you can call directly without these special numbers, but it will charge ou a lot. 00+ country code+ area code (example: 001 808 1212121212), "00" can be replaced by "+".
Post a Comment