How to Get a Phone Plan in Taipei
Signing up for a cell phone plan is one of the first orders of business when moving to a new country. How else are you supposed to navigate a foreign city without a 4G connection to Google Maps?
Thankfully it’s quite easy (and cheap) to sign up and get connected to the Taipei network within minutes, as long as you have a few essentials. Here’s what you need to know.
You will need:
- Passport
- ARC*
- Unlocked phone
*You don’t need an ARC for a prepaid SIM (though you still need 2 pieces of ID — see below), but you’ll need to change your phone number if you end up signing a contract.
There are plenty of different phone stores to choose from in Taipei, but we ended up going with one of the most popular, Myfone, to sign up for our phone plans. Myfone uses Taiwan Mobile as its service provider, which is compatible with most phones and generally has great signal across the island.
Any time we’ve visited Myfone, there has usually been at least one staff member who speaks decent English to help us. Once you’re seated with them at the desk, you’ll choose from a selection of plans to suit your needs. We inquired about unlimited data plans and were pleasantly surprised at how cheap they are.
- 1 year unlimited data: NT$999/month
- 2 years unlimited data: NT$599/month
On the day we visited, they had a promotion for a 2-year NT$499/month unlimited data plan if you switch to Taiwan Mobile from a different provider. One of the Myfone staff members actually led us out of the store and down the street to another shop to help us get a cheap SIM card, just so that we could turn around and switch back to Taiwan Mobile for the deal. Talk about service!
After handing over your ARC and passport, there is very little you need to do. They will give you a dropdown list of phone numbers that you can choose from, and then the contract will come up in Chinese on the screen. Simply sign your name on the screen and you’re good to go!
In the end, the process went very smoothly and didn’t take long at all. We ended up with unlimited data for only NT$499/month (that’s an incredibly low $16 American). Yes, we had to sign a 2-year contract, and if you’re only planning on staying in Taipei for a year, you might be hesitant to do so. But it’s still worth the penalty of NT$3000 to cancel mid-contract.
The great thing about getting unlimited data is that you can tether your other devices to your phone and use the free data. We ended up saving a lot of money by choosing not to install Wifi at home — we simply tether our computers to our mobile hotspots and enjoy free 4G speed internet any time, any place!
If you don’t have an ARC yet:
When you first move to Taiwan, it can take a few weeks to actually receive an ARC; you need to visit the Immigration offices to apply and then wait for processing. Assuming you can’t survive on sporadic Wifi connections across the city, what are you supposed to do in the meantime?
We suggest getting a prepaid SIM to tide you over until you have your ARC in hand. To get a prepaid SIM, you will need 2 pieces of ID. Your passport and a secondary form of government-issued identification like a national ID or driver’s license will work fine.
There are many options for prepaid SIM cards around the city — you can even pick them up at some convenience stores. We just got them at Myfone when we first arrived, because you can choose from a bunch of options depending on how much data you want.
The only downside is that you’ll have to change your phone number once you upgrade to a contract, so those temporary digits that you’ve already shared with everyone will have to be updated.
Small inconveniences aside, it’s actually very simple to get a phone plan in Taipei. Soon you’ll be enjoying unlimited data for a fraction of the cost of what you’d pay in most western countries!
