China Telecom Network compatibility

germyfma · December 6, 2016, 4:51pm

Good Afternoon Fairphone users and satff.

I will be soon moving to China, city of Harbin, with a new job and my old phone has conveniently died recently so I was thinking in finally getting a Fairphone. However, due to company policy I will be forced to use a SIM from China Telecom network provider so I’m limited in terms of services providers that cold work with FP2.

I have been researching about it a little bit in diferent pages, these ones for example:

All the sites I have checked give the same conclusion, more information is needed in order to determine if the FP2 is compatible with China Telecom mobile network.

So, I’m requesting the help from the community and specially the staff to know if the FP2 is compatible with China Telecom ¿Is there an official list of compatible devices or networks that I haven’t found?¿Any previous experience in this field?

Thanks in advance!

Shanghailander · December 20, 2016, 4:52am

Hello Germyfma!

I am in China too, in Shanghai actually!
Before I ordered my Fairphone (FP2), FP support suggested me to check on www.willmyphonework.net, a very useful website to check the compatibility of any phone with any network, and this include FP2 and Chinese networks!!

You will find out that China Telecom is compatible for 4G LTE only (for one band: 1800 MHz). If you want to use 2G or 3G, you will have to be China Unicom.
You might have to be cautious with the use of 4G because this band seems to use a lot of power - at least with the Unicom SIM I am currently using. I’m just careful switching it off when I have WIFI.

The cool stuff having a dual SIM phone is that you can use the best of two network carrier: in my case I use a China Mobile SIM for calls and 2G (I find their coverage super good everywhere in China), plus a Unicom SIM for 4G only (they have very competitive prices for data-only plans).

Hope we can meet sometime soon in somewhere in China!
Cheers!