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China Mobile has opened a wireless service center and Internet cafe at an altitude of 17,000 feet at the Everest base camp, making it the world's highest such site, according to People's Daily Online.

According to reports, the Internet cafe is aiming to effectively protect the Olympic torch relay teams' communications needs at Mount Qomolangma in Tibet. China Mobile has built a business office and Internet cafe at an altitude of 5,200 meters at Mount Qomolangma base camp to provide mobile services and Internet services to government officials, mountain climbing members and journalists.

Maybe they'll add an oxygen bar for out-of-shape journalists with underdeveloped hemoglobin.

China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou said he will "keep all options open" on the introduction of the iPhone in China, Paul Midler reports.

In January, a China Mobile executive announced that talks had broken off over Apple's desire for control. Now, Wang says talks have not "officially" begun.

China Mobile is the largest mobile provider in China, a market that is projected to reach $2.8 billion by 2010, and urban China is by no means a no-iPhone zone. Apple develops more advanced locking techniques at roughly the same rate unlocking techniques make their debut in electronics markets worldwide.

Street prices for imported and unlocked iPhones vary with the news about any official sales in China. After January's news of the breakdown in China Mobile talks, prices spiked. But I suspect the gray market will not die even if China Mobile and Apple make a deal.

Apple products, even though they are made in China (my MacBook was shipped direct from Suzhou, near Shanghai), tend to be more expensive here. I overheard a Chinese couple in the Bainaohui electronics market at Chaoyangmen yesterday getting ready to buy a MacBook Air for about $2,700 (compared with about $1,800 in the United States). In a less extreme example a few weeks ago, the Beijing price at an authorized dealer for my friend's new MacBook was about $300 higher than in the United States or even Hong Kong.

No doubt, if the higher prices continue to dominate, people will keep asking friends to pick up iPhones in the United States or elsewhere to be unlocked here.

The Reuters article that Midler links to reminds us that iPhone talks are under way with NTT DoCoMo in Japan. Maybe the trip for gray market phones won't be as far...

It's hardly surprising that China Mobile can figure out about where its subscribers are when the phone is on (or when the battery's in). This sort of technology is standard in developed mobile networks, and it's fueling a wave of business innovation and "locative technology."

So why was it so shocking to an AFP reporter when China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou told an audience at the World Economic Forum that "we know who you are, but also where you are"? Will at Imagethief has already made the alarmist journalism argument, so I'll leave that to him. (The AFP headline ran under the unnecessary headline, "China's mobile network: a big brother surveillance tool?")

What struck me was U.S. Rep. Ed Markey's (D-Mass.) surprised reaction. Markey said the news was "bone chilling" and told AFP, "I have my eyebrows arched so high they're hitting the ceiling."

I just doubt this really could have been shocking to Markey, who is perhaps the U.S. Congress' most prominent name on telecommunications policy. Along with liberal members of the FCC board, he's been a friend to the "net neutrality" movement, and he was received warmly last year in Memphis at Free Press' National Conference on Media Reform.

Anecdotally, I would say the assumption among people involved with media and politics in Beijing is that it is trivially easy for the government to tap cell phones and gather location data based on which tower your phone is in touch with. E-mail also is often assumed not to be secure. Markey must know the U.S. government can do this too, especially in light of the illegal wiretaps by the Bush administration. (The secret monitoring of U.S. citizens would actually have been legal if they had bothered to get their warrants rubber-stamped by a secret court, so don't think due process is a defense in the United States.)

If Markey was really shocked, he was ignorant. If he was faking it, he was taking part in China alarmism on an issue that is news to practically no one in China. This is not the place to discuss the merits and demerits of government surveillance, but no one is surprised that it's a fact. I wish U.S. politicians wouldn't be so willing to make such statements about China just to grab the spotlight when journalists are unnecessarily aroused.

China Mobile will start requiring prepaid phone customers to show ID when buying SIM (subscriber identity module) cards, the company's general manager announced.

The anonymity of phone service for Shenzhouxing (prepaid) customers, which ChinaTechNews says account for 70 percent of all users, made it important to hold on to your original SIM documentation in case you lose the phone. If you lose the SIM and its number, as far as I know, you can't get your number back.

This comes at a time when China Mobile will also begin allowing number portability among its services (but not with other carriers). As it stands, users wanting to switch from prepaid to a plan or vice versa have to buy new SIM cards and lose their phone number. New 150-prefix numbers are portable.

The ID requirement brings mobile service into line with an expanding "real name system" (实名制, also "identity verification") that ties individuals to their actions in the market and in communication. For non-Chinese used to providing ID numbers or credit card information for a variety of services, this may not seem like a big deal. But this removes a more or less anonymous form of communication that is not easily tracked by the government.

Indeed, the idea was pushed earlier by the Ministry of Security and State Council Information Office, according to Telecomasia.net. The real name system is not well-loved by online commentators. It's been considered for blogs, online games, and social-networking sites already. What it represents is a traceability of actions, and accountability for speech, since many people communicate in online gaming environments and through blogs and BBSs.

I'd hesitate to call these developments a true loss of liberty. The government can probably already find out who's using what phone most of the time if monitoring criminal activity. Like Lester on The Wire, they need only connect the dots in a network of communication. And like the people Lester chases on The Wire, people with something to hide will likely find workarounds. The phone ID requirement should make it easier for the government to monitor people, but I think it will also make it notably easier for regular customers to deal with services.

Several news stories have noted that China's Internet user base increased by more than 70 million in 2007 to a count of 213 million at year's end. Little noted is that 23 percent of these users access the Internet from mobile devices, the remainder counted as broadband users.

The statistics, released by the China Internet Network Information Center and reported by ChinaTechNews, do not seem to specify how many of these mobile users also use broadband, and I can't find data on whether people use broadband at home or at work.

CINIC also reported (translated) that almost 40 percent of users said the top reason they used the Internet is for instant messaging, edging out e-mail as the top application.

The largest mobile operator in China has broken off talks with Apple over the iPhone, with one executive saying Apple wanted to share too much revenue.

From the Financial Times:

Chinese media on Monday quoted Gao Nianshu, general manager of China Mobile's data department, saying that Apple had given the impression it wanted to control the value chain and had pushed for up to 30 percent of revenues generated by locally sold iPhones.

"Of course we could not agree," Mr. Gao told a gathering of local MBA students, according to the Sina Web site. China Mobile also doubted Apple's prowess in communications technology, it quoted him as saying.

China Mobile is a topic for another day; as of November, it serves more than 360 million of the 522 million mobile users in China. The second-largest mobile company here, China Unicom, did not comment on whether it plans to put the iPhone out there.

Meanwhile, unlocked phones are still pouring into the market. I'm seeing more and more of them in the hands of rich folks, Chinese and foreign alike, and there are plenty on sale at electronics markets. Perhaps the person behind the last blip I saw about the iPhone in China was overexcited or full of it, but with the black/gray market so healthy, both China Mobile and Apple will probably not wait long to put a deal together and take their share.

(Credit: Crave Asia)

As the iPhone is expected to debut in Asia only next year, China's largest cell phone carrier is reportedly in talks with Apple to bring the much-anticipated handset to the Mainland.

During a session with reporters at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, China Mobile's chief executive revealed that the company is engaged in talks with Apple on the iPhone, according to BusinessWeek. However, he confirmed that the two parties have not come to any agreement as there are still revenue-sharing issues to resolve.

The Apple iPhone first launched in the U.S. market earlier this year and was recently rolled out in Europe. So far, there's been no word on when exactly the device will debut in Asia come next year.

(Source: Crave Asia)