Hello guys!

Since I am moving to a place only for myself, and I won't have internet, I have to deal with China telecom by myself.

Question: do you have to be chinese? So, in other words, do I have to ask and ask again to my landlord?

I do hope it's quite easy.
Regards!

V.

If the apartment already has a phone account then you need the owner of the account to add Internet service.

If there is no phone account then go to China Telecom with your passport and get phone and or Internet connected. Once you do the paperwork they will normally come in a few days to connect the line.

If you want to move around a lot in Yunnan, you may consider to buy what is called a USB-modem. That's a USB-stick which let you connect to a mobile-phone network. You can either buy a Sim-Card and online time for your USB-stick from China Telecom, or buy Gigabyte packages on a Sim-Card from China Unicom. The deal for China Unicom is, you buy x-amount of Gigabytes for 12 months and you will get the USB-stick for free. I paid 1.200 RMB for 25 Gigabytes / year. Yes, the USB-modem is more expensive than an ADSL at home, but it gives you the choice to use it wherever you want. The USB-stick is competitive as long as you are not downloading tons of data. If you need to, you can still download Gigabytes for free while drinking coffee at Salvadors or the French Cafe ;-)

When I was in Guilin couple of years ago, I went into China Unicom office, paid a year rent, i think it was 900rmb, man came next day and drooped a Lan cable through my window. Connection was on the latest fibre optic systems, Lan switches outside all the apartment buildings, I got a rock solid 8mb up and down, np.
No phone line needed (because its lan cable) no other requirements.
Was very simple and no further contact needed with them.
You could also get one of the new mobile phones with 3G as above with the USB stick and just plug your phone into the computer, best of both worlds then, plus benefit of 3G phone.

If you take your laptop from place to place as often as I do, then I highly recommend the 3G USB Modem from China Telecom. It's 500元 for the modem and 540元 for six months (which works out to 90元 a month for the service) but the most important thing is that there is *no* bandwidth cap on it-only a 100 hours per month limit. Most of the phone based 3G plans, while convenient with a Bluetooth DUN profile, have a very small bandwidth cap.

I've been using mine for almost five months now pulling 17-24GiB a month watching TV and bittorrenting movies not available on the Chinese sites. Although download speeds in Kunming tend to be a bit on the low side due to all of the 3G users here, it's equivalent to or better than ADSL when you travel to less densely populated areas. It sure beats the pants off any of the U.S. carriers with the exception of Sprint, who really does make good on their "unlimited data" plan and not the 5GiB caps of the others. If you like to travel as much as I do, then it's really a no-brainer.