So, you're taking your phone overseas to China? Lucky you, it's a wonderful place. And, I can give you two bits of advice; make sure you try the Peking Duck and take a Vodafone SIM card with you.
For many wanting to use their phone overseas, the easiest solution is to pick up a local SIM card when they arrive at their destination. This is a budget-friendly idea for mobile data, but it's not a perfect solution for calling and messaging, depending on which country you are visiting. You'll end up with a new phone number that no one at home will know, and it may be expensive to call Australia.
Roaming on your Australian SIM card is the alternative, and while it solves the problems above, it can be an expensive way to stay online. All the major carriers offer roaming packs and plans, but Vodafone has the best option by far. Costing just $5 per day, Vodafone customers can use their plans exactly as they would at home.
We've written about this a number of times in the past, and if you want more detail on how Vodafone $5 Roaming works, you can read about it here.
Let's instead look specifically at roaming in China and why Vodafone's travel deal is the best option by far.
Got Google?
You may be aware that the Chinese government has a nationwide internet firewall in place which blocks access to a number of services that you probably use everyday. Known as the Great Firewall of China, it blocks access to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, Pinterest, lots of US news websites, and Google. Like, all of Google.
Do you use Gmail for work? Docs, Sheets and Slides? Google Drive, Google Hangouts or YouTube. All blocked. Worst of all for travellers in a foreign country; there is no access to Google Maps.
Here is a good list of the different sites and services that have been blocked.
This is where having a Vodafone SIM card makes a huge difference. Even though you will be roaming on a Chinese network all of the web traffic on the Vodafone SIM is tunnelled through servers in Australia, so it completely bypasses the Great Firewall. It works like a VPN without you having to do anything.
If you're like me, this is a godsend. I didn't know how much I currently rely on Google services until I couldn't access any of them.
I also tested a local China Unicom SIM card while I was visiting and the internet was a wasteland. I could access Baidu (which is basically Chinese Google) but had to rely on translation services to read anything. As for getting around, you can download Baidu Maps, but there is no English language version.
How does it perform?
Given that the Vodafone SIM let me access all of my services and messaging apps, I didn't really care how well it worked, but for the record, it worked well.
Like my local Chinese SIM, the Vodafone SIM roamed on the China Unicom network and I had access to 4G LTE. Because of the circuitous route the web traffic takes, the latency is slow, so it can take a few moments before things start to load, but once connected the data is fast.
From a few tests performed, the latency averaged out at about 450 milliseconds, which is about 8- or 9-times slower than you should expect from a 4G connection in Australia. But the download speeds were pretty good, with a top speed just under 30Mbps, and an average speed of about 16Mbps.
How does the Vodafone price compare?
Compared with the price of a local SIM card in China, a Vodafone compares well for a short trip, up to 10 days or so.
A local SIM card will cost you about AU$50 for a prepaid plan with about 3GB of data and a limited number of calls and text within China. The credit will be valid for 30 days, so this might be suitable for a longer trip.
With a Vodafone SIM you can use as much data as you normally get with your plan each month: 5GB, 10GB, 50GB -- it doesn't matter, you can use it.
You might find using the Vodafone SIM more cost effective if you turn your phone off when you're not using it. You are only charged for the days that you use your phone, but "using your phone" includes receiving calls and messages, or having apps like Facebook check for new data automatically, so turning your phone off is the only surefire way of not paying the $5 fee for a day.
China Unicom vs China Mobile
One small speed bump I ran into during my trip was when my phone switched from roaming on the China Unicom 4G network to crawling on the China Mobile 2G network, and refused to switch back again. I went from internet utopia to the dark ages, and switching to airplane mode and back again didn't fix the problem.
The solution was to manually select which network I wanted to use; an option buried away in the networking settings on your phone.
For iPhone users: Go to Settings > Carrier and turn off Automatic. Wait until available networks appear, which might take two minutes.
For Android users: Go to Settings > Wireless & networks > Mobile Networks > Network Operators and then choose "Search networks".
Your phone then searches for all networks it can connect to, and this can take several minutes. Even at the point when you don't think it is working, keep waiting. Eventually you will see a list and you can select the best network -- in my case China Unicom 4G.
Your mileage may vary with this. My difficulty with China Mobile might have been that it was forcing me onto the 2G network, and not specifically with China Mobile as a whole. Still, if you follow the steps above you should avoid the same pitfalls.
Vodafone provided WhistleOut with a SIM card for use during this review.
Joseph Hanlon
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