China home broadband + mobile annual prices
The prices of home broadband and mobile phone plans have really gone down in the past 15 years in China. Here are my notes from Shanghai.
What this means is the quality of life has really gone up. From 3G to 5G-A (5.5G); postage stamp grainy video to 4K HDR.
If the current trend continues, a home broadband connection may be unnecessary as early as this year (2026) given the 2026 plans include 300GB/month 5.5G quota. My monthly wireless usage is around 15GB/month and wired usage is around 12GB/month excluding video downloads and big game downloads. Including the big downloads I'm still typically under 200GB/month, far below the 300GB/month wireless quota.
|
Era |
Standard Speed |
Typical Annual Price (CNY) |
Note |
|
2011 |
2 Mbps |
¥1800 |
150MB for ¥46. 3G speed |
|
2012 |
4 Mbps |
¥1800 |
SIM with 50GB/year for ¥800. 3G speed |
|
2013–2015 |
20 Mbps |
¥1200 |
1.5GB for ¥128/month at 3G speed. 4G in 2015. Can't recall price. |
|
2016–2020 |
100 Mbps |
¥1200 |
SIM with 30GB/month at ¥189. 5G in 2020. |
|
2021 |
1 Gbps |
¥2400 |
3 SIMs with 30GB/month at 5G speeds included |
|
2023 |
1 Gbps |
¥2400 |
3 SIMs with 60GB/month at 5G speeds included |
|
2025 |
2 Gbps |
¥2400 |
3 SIMs with 120GB/month at 5G-A speeds included |
|
2026 |
2 Gbps |
¥2400 |
1 SIM with 300GB/month at 5.5G speeds included. Additional SIMs for ¥10 each. |
So just how fast is 5G-A? My record was 1.1Gbps. See below. I sometimes disable WiFi in the evenings to get faster downloads because the wired broadband connection is competing with my neighbors for bandwidth. It's amazing to download a full-length movie in under 1 minute. Going to watch a movie at the cinema/theater is for the novelty honestly. It's amazing to me cinemas/theaters still exist.
There's a chance I may keep a wired broadband connection for lower latency and the 10Gbps that is being rolled out. I have no idea why I would need 10Gbps, but if it's there, why not?
If you wonder if there are services that can really push data that fast, Steam can sometime hit 930Mbps and AppleTV can sometimes download as fast as 700Mbps.
If you want to see more details on the 2026 plans from China Telecom, go to https://sh.189.cn/newmall/static/spm/109268.html
