Telecommunications in China

I was afraid to write about this while in China because I wasn't sure how legal my telecommunications setup would have been perceived by the Chinese authorities. While Internet is widely available in Cafes and hotels, the chinese government keeps a tight leash on what sites its citizens can visit. While I had heard about this before, I had no idea how tight their control was. China restricts access to most of the sites I planned to use to keep in touch with family and friends. Blogger, Blogspot, Twitter, Youtube and parts of Facebook are blocked. You still were able to read my blog while I was in China, so it means I found a way around the firewall :) Indeed, after a bit of investigation (kind of difficult since most sites dealing with the subject are blocked), I found a solution: Skydur. Their small fee was more than worth the freedom to visit any site I wanted and the installation was pretty easy, even on my Linux powered netbook.

The story is the complete opposite for cell phone communications. I knew that I could use my unlocked phone in China and simply get a SIM card, which are plentiful and available everywhere in China from cell phone stores to newspaper stands. While plans are varied and quite hard to understand for a foreigner, rates are really cheap compared to Canada. I was able to find a SIM card for about $10 that was loaded with a bit less than $5 of prepaid airtime. I found later that if I went to the market instead of the official provider, I could have gotten the same card for about $6. The $5 of prepaid airtime was more than enough to last me through the entire trip and make and receive many calls from friends and relatives as well as make internal to China long distances to arrange hotels, tours, etc. Everytime I made a call, I would think it was my last, expecting the $5 to have run out but when I left there was still gas in the tank. Amazing! For overseas called, I used a callback service that allowed me to talk as much as I wanted with rates at about 11 cents per minute, charged to my credit card once a month. This worked really well with my prepaid plan which as far as I understood, included unlimited incoming calls.