if you've got 12vpn just found an awesome new feature for iphone users. Its called connect on demand. it just starts the vpn whenever you open twitter or facebook app or connect to blocked site. don't even need to think about it anymore. It requires you to remove all current profiles and reinstall the IPSEC profiles from 12vpn.com/ios

sadly the 12vpn site is blocked right now so you need a vpn to even reach it.

It should work. It basically depends on roaming agreements. The US Kindle has an AT&T sim card inside, the UK one has a vodafone sim card inside. Both of these networks have roaming agreements with China Mobile and China Unicom. Therefore if you are near a Unicom 3G signal it will use Unicom, if not it will probably use China Mobile as their EDGE is faster than Unicom's GPRS. You are not charged for roaming - the cost of buying the books is supposed to cover that.

both china telecom and china unicom do high speed fibre. its extremely expensive and only available to businesses. you may be able to get it but you'd need to clear it with building management as it involves putting fibre cables through the building.

Otherwise you are pretty much stuck with ADSL.

China Unicom's WCDMA network is actually much faster than any home broadband packages. Assuming you can get a signal in your apartment (not always easy) you could run a MiFi device or some other kind of 3G-Wifi router.

I remember when there was an earthquake in Taiwan a few years ago, the cable was broken somewhere in the taiwan straits and neither territory would allow the other's navy to send ships out to fix it. internet ground to a halt for months.

there's very little point in measuring using an overseas speedtest as the GFW slows everything down.

When China Telecom advertises a speed that is the max speed between your house and their Kunming gateway and even that will vary according to many factors. They don't promise anything beyond that.

If you want to test go to www.linkwan.net and choose Kunming.