Hi,

I was using maxis roaming pass in china (guangzhou and shenzhen) last week. I noticed the loading and browsing speed on chinese apps were very slow or sometime it just doesn't load. No speed issue on apps like FB, IG, Google !

Chinese apps that i encountered issue:

Didi
Meituan
China's banking apps
GaoDe Map
Baitu Map

all very slow!

Anyone face the same issue before?

This post has been edited by Dozz: Nov 9 2024, 12:47 PM

hint: great firewall of china

It could be you have exceeded the daily limit.

I think its 2GB for Maxis and 3GB for Digi, then it will throttle your speed.

happened to us too

Nope, definitely not exceeded any daily limit.. it just very slow while running Chinese apps.

If slow on "American's app" like google, FB, IG while in china, i could understand
but roaming in china and unable to load or very very slow on loading chinese's app... that i dont understand why...

Routing issue, your IP is actually back to Malaysia and to visit China apps it will route from Maxis KL to CN IP
And Malaysia ISPs is known to have bad routing to CN network
Happened to me before when using CDG roaming in CN , everything works fine except when scan their bank QR using Alipay
Luckily I have China Mobile SIM , use it as hotspot when make payment

Roaming routing issue make China app load slow

Don't roam when you don't need to.
Buy local SIM (e-SIM, if your phone support). Any roaming SIM will do unnecessary routing back to origin country and to your visiting server.
Last time I was in UK and do roaming with Malaysia SIM. Better buy UK SIM, expensive (due to RM) but at least I can use normally.

This post has been edited by poh880: Nov 10 2024, 11:07 AM

Will need roam when in China cuz addicted to FB / WhatsApp / IG / Messenger etc all blocked
But can consider roam sim like CUNIQ / CMHK / CTM / CTMO which the routing will be more better (HK / Macao)

Like others have said, because roaming will route your traffic back to MY and then back to China gain from MY.
MY to China routing is very bad.

You can just use eSim HK for Sim 2 Data.

Agreed, experience is that the HK eSIM are quite good. No major speed issues…

thank you for all the input guys! i will consider getting HK eSIM then.

Any recommendation? Possible to buy HK eSIM online?

Yes. Trip.com plenty.
Just buy daily one (1 Day Plan) to test. If satisfied can buy longer period.

Roaming traffic is routed back through the home country (in this case through Maxis back in Malaysia).

As stated before, Malaysian providers have terrible routing to China so it's not surprising.

china best roaming if want to use non-china apps.
faster


other countries yes, local sim waaayyyyyy better

There’s also this Eskimo esim with free 500MB trial amount. From my experience, it seems to route via Singapore which was a bit faster. They give free trial coz they assume if people are happy, they will buy proper data plan from this provider.