Hi,
I'm coming back to stay in Kunming for 2 to 4 months. This time I am bringing my net-book. I have a Huawei USB 3G aircard which I bought in Thailand. My card has the operating frequency(3G) HSUPA/HSDPA/UMTS 2100/850MHz. Will this work in China?
I also need to know which telecom company provides a sim card to access the internet.

I did a google search but could not find any clear answers.

Thanks for any useful suggestion

I'm pretty sure your Huawei will work in China with multiple carriers. Almost every major carrior has 3g plans for usb dongle. I know I have seen tents selling electronics on yuantongbei lu. There they have one or two vendors with printouts of all the carriers and plans. Alternatively, you could walk into a China Unicomm store and just sign up there.

Looking at the configuration, you have a modem that will work only on the China Unicom network. Which is a blessing since their service is much cheaper than the other companies. Walk into any China Unicom shop and buy a prepaid 3G card (specify you will be using it only for internet access, this part is important, if not they will try to sell you a 3G card for a phone which includes minutes as well as internet access). After that slip the card into your modem and you're good to go.

Been using one myself at home and very satisfied with the service, connection is very quick considering its 3G.

1st thanks for the comments.

So filipd, China Unicom uses UMTS 2100 or 850MHz?
Can you tell me if they have a internet sim card that is billed monthly by the hour, for example, 30 hours a month for X yuan?

What is the average kbps that you get?
What do they charge per month?
Is it prepaid or postpaid?

Thanks again for your info.

China Unicom uses UMTS 2100 if I am not mistaken. What I know for sure is that they use the HSDPA (among others) standard so if your modem can handle it you can get up to 7.2 Mbit/s download speeds (of course in practice it will be a bit slower). Where I live I am able to get between 3 and 4 Mbit/s download speeds, which is quite fast in China. Plus if you use a VPN you can increase download speeds as well (since it bypasses the you-know-what). There was talk of China Unicom upgrading to HSPA+ but not sure if this has happened yet (if it does speeds will reach 42 Mbit/s).

Basically for internet only access there are no contracts. It is a pre-paid system. I walked-in, handed over 500 RMB and was given a SIM card. Prices are like this:

60 RMB = 1GB downloads in whole of China + 1GB in Yunnan (so you get a total of 2GB). Then there are more expensive packages, but I can't remember the prices of all of them. I know the most expensive is 300 RMB and you get 10 GB of downloads. If you go over your allowance of 2GB for 60 RMB they automatically upgrade you to a higher priced package, so no need to pay for extra usage by the megabyte (which I think is a brilliant idea).

The above are not monthly charges...when money runs out you go back to the shop with your SIM card and recharge the money.

The only post-paid system is when you purchase a 3G SIM card that you will use for internet and phone calls (on your mobile). But the data allowance is lower and monthly costs are higher, so better opt for the simple pre-paid option.

Finally each time you disconnect, China Unicom sends you a message letting you know your data usage (so you can calculate exactly how much money you have left on your card).

So you got to plop down 500RMB just for the privilege of using their internet network and then pay for various download options. I live in Thailand and the sim card is basically free and you pay for internet access either by data download size or number of hours per month. Right now, I use my aircard for emergencies and I am paying less than 32 RMB for 30 hours a month but for download speeds of under 400K bps which is good enough for general web/email/skype use.
Again, thanks for the useful info.

500rmb is just the minimum prepaid amount. You still get to deduct usage off that amount, so it's not wasted, unless your here too short of a time to use it up.

I thought Unicom's cheapest prepaid 3g data plan was 300rmb if you didn't require the usb stick, and you get a few gigs of data to use. That's what they offer for the ipad 3g sim, which I assume would work just as well for usb.

I went with China Telecom, three months unlimited data up to 50 hours/month with Huawei dongle for about 500 kuai. The coverage is very good in rural areas, but I've found the bandwidth to be less than stellar. Next time I might explore Mobile if I was going to be in rural areas and Unicom if I was going to be mostly in the big cities. But overall, I'm not dissatisfied with Telecom.

I'm trying to study via Adobe Connect software in my Swedish university while sitting here i China. It requires a quite good connection to work,and since I move around quite a bit I'd like to know if anyone have an idea if USB air cards could be fast enough? We're talking interactive classes with video, powerpoint and speaking.