Configuring China Mobile GPRS

So, I got my phone unlocked and got myself a local Sim Ka (there's one word easy to remember in Chinese: card = ka!) and now want to use the internet...

Well, I personally signed up for DongGanDiDai (called M-Zone for foreigners) which is a pay-as-you-go with full GPRS availablity. Sim cards cost about 50RMB (more for numbers with less 4s and more 8s) and come with no credit preloaded. You also need to buy a Chong zhi (Chong jurr) card to add credit to the account. I think M-Zone is quite good, there is also easy-own but calls are more expensive and it only has WAP not GPRS. If you want 3G that works with a foreign phone you need to sign with CHina Unicom instead of China Mobile and I don't have experience there.

When you have the SimKa, call 13800138000 and press 2 in the menu for English prompts to active the account. You then also need to call 10086 and again choose English from the menu and select the options to talk to an operator and get them to activate GPRS.

If possible, download the Opera Mini web browser, making sure you get the China version as the foreign version is blocked. This makes browsing much faster as it compresses the data before sending to your phone (very important on GPRS!). Supports most phone OSes.

The APN you need to set up in your phone config is: APN cmnet, Username cmnet, Password blank, MCC 460, MNC 02, APN type default. That's what worked for me. More details on that kind of thing and can be found at this site.