If your home-country mobile phone meets certain technical requirements, becoming a China Mobile subscriber during your visit to China is extremely simple. China Mobile’s rates are among the lowest in the world, so everyone in your family or group will want to get their own China Mobile number.

First the technical part:

If your phone is ‘locked’ to your home-country service provider it won’t work in China. Also, your phone must be GSM compatible and not a CDMA only phone. Like most service providers in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Africa, China Mobile utilizes the 900/1800 bands. Most providers in North America use different bands so phones from there are unusable in China, unless they are ‘quad band’ phones.

Now the easy part:

You can buy a China Mobile SIM card at any authorized retailer such as a newsstand or variety store, but China Mobile Service Centers usually sell them for less; about 20 RMB ($3USD). Don’t forget to bring your passport if you come to our Service Centre to register.

Now just pop one of our pay-as-you-go SIM cards into your phone, dial 13800138000 to activate, hang up and you’re ready to talk or text. The instructions are on the card and our service reps or retailers will be happy to set it up for you. You’ll also receive a confirmation text message within seconds of being activated.

Adding airtime:

There are thousands of reliable retailers where you can purchase a China Mobile phone card. Most local newsstands and many variety stores sell the cards, which are called “chong1 zhi2 ka3” in Mandarin. The retailer will need to know the first three digits of your phone number to make sure you get the right card for the plan you’re on.

China Mobile offers phone cards at a variety of prices, and the most expensive costs 100 RMB or about 14 US Dollars. After purchase all you do is open the security seal on the card and dial 1380013800 (it’s on the card) to reach China Mobile’s bilingual, automated service and punch in the verification number on the card. Within seconds you’ll receive a text message indicating you have successfully added airtime.

Low cost, high quality service:

China Mobile prides itself in being one of most economical cell phone service providers in the world. Once you’re on our network you can call our Chinese and English-speaking operators by simply dialling 10086 for exact information about our voice and text message fees.

Generally, if you were to buy a 100-yuan (about 14 US Dollars) charge card, you could talk to someone for about 160 minutes. That makes the basic rate for outgoing and incoming local calls in Beijing about 0.6 yuan (8 US Cents) per minute.

A text message sent to another China Mobile subscriber is basically charged at 0.10 yuan (about 1.5 US Cents). A text message sent overseas will cost about 2 yuan or just over 25 US cents.

As a China Mobile pay-as-you-go customer you can receive calls from overseas, but if you want to make an overseas call you must first leave a security deposit at our service centre. Come to a service center to ask about this requirement or call 10086 to reach our Chinese and English-speaking operator.

Check out our discount plans:

China Mobile operates two pay-as-you-go plans. You can lower your costs by participating in our package plans. For a set monthly fee, which is automatically deducted from your existing phone credit, you can receive discounts on a variety of services, such as free incoming local calls or discounts on text messaging. Once you join a plan the discounted service comes into effect on the first day of the following month. Click here to read more about our Easyown plan or here to read about our M-Zone plan.

A final word about technical compatibility

Feel free to bring your phone from abroad to any China Mobile service centre and we’ll pop in a SIM card and see if we can get you connected to our network with a local number. If your phone from home doesn’t work, our service centres sell a wide variety of unlocked handsets at reasonable rates. North Americans should also note that electricity in China is provided at 220 volts and so they should make sure their mobile phone charger can step up from 110 volts.

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