China Travel Forum

[Lyman Hijay]

Hi sorry if this is a stupid question.I am going to China with a cellphone mainly to SMS my kids at home.However local calls in China are really expensive with it so I was wondering if I can buy a public phonebox card and if so how can I call a chinese cellphone number with it to contact my friends in China.
Is it easy to find call boxes and do they have instructions in English?
thanks

[Upom Urey]

First thing is you need to belong to a GSM network such as ATT or T-mobile, because GSM phones around the world use SIM cards for identification. Verizon phones are CDMA technology, used mostly in the USA, so useless in most other countries.
Secondly, you must make sure your phone is unlocked, That is, you can use it on other phone networks by changing your SIM card. I know that T-mobile will allow you to unlock a phone every 90 days. If you have an old GSM phone just call for unlock proceedures and use the old phone in China.
Everyone else who replied was correct. Just get a SIM card at a department store. If you ask the girl behind the counter, she will replace the card and phone the telephone company to activate it. also ask her what number to call to check the value remaining in the phone. You can recharge the phone almost anywhere. i always use the same booth with the same girl in the subway station at Shanxi road station. I just hand her the phone with 100 RMB and she makes it happen.

[Umaga navil]

Call boxes seem to be relatively rare, but you will find phones for hire for local calls at all sorts of shops on just about every street. Usually the phone will be visible from the street. I never found it difficult to make a local call even without any Chinese. I would just walk up to the phone and show the number I wanted to call. Whenever I showed any hesitancy in how to use the phone, the shop person would happily dial the number for me. The cost was never more than 1 RMB. I think it was usually 1/2 an RMB. Good luck. bob

[Tyrwhite]

really? oh, thanks u all