I got more and more friends (including me) who have to bring 2 phones with them, most likely one on China Mobile and the other on China Unicom which was recently signed because of WCDMA 3G and iPhone 4. It’s a bit annoying, most people have been with China Mobile for quite a long while, so they just don’t want a new mobile number, but they can not resist the magic of iPhone 4 and 3G. The good news is that soon you won’t worry about this any more. Today, if you are based in Tianjin and Hainan, you should be able to port your old China Mobile or China Telcom number to China Unicom, i.e. you can keep your old number and enjoy iPhone 4 as well as 3G.
Thanks to iPhone. In a recent annoucement from China Unicom, it says over 10% of its total 3G subscribers are on iPhone package. Since 25th, September 2010 when iPhone 4 officially launched in China, the number of iPhone users has reached 400k. In October this year, over 1.1 millions new 3G subscribers and nearly 20% of them goes for iPhone package. Furthermore, till now there are over 600k people have pre-ordered iPhone 4 package.
So China Mobile must be quite jealous. They even offer micro-sim cards to convince its users that they can still use iPhone without leaving China Mobile. But the result is quite obvious: China Unicom is stealing China Mobile’s ‘loyal’ subscribers. Now China Unicom is saying that you can port your China Mobile and China Telecom number to China Unicom and also possible to have an iPhone 4, for me, it sounds like announcing a war.
If you are with China Mobile/China Telcom, will you consider to port your number?