My team mate was traveling to China with his Nexus 6 (with Project Fi SIM-card) and was able to access Google services. The phone uses roaming data to access Google and your phone gets IP assigned by your home mobile network packet gateway (P-GW). There is no local data break-out. On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 6:00 PM, Sean Hunter <jamesb2147@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello everyone,
I come to you to humbly request your assistance, on or off list. This not an urgent technical matter, but something I'm rather fascinated by at the moment.
While in China recently, I noticed that my Project Fi phone was accessing Google. Not only Google, but Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, Twitter, and many other normally perma-blocked websites. It's taken me a few days of sleep deprived thinking to realize this, but I'm seeing the same or similar 26.x.x.x addresses across countries I've visited, including China, Spain, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
I'm not a cellular guy and I know even less about MVNO's, but I'm curious if I'm inferring the technical operations of the network correctly. It sounds like the local cellular companies are provisioning access upon arrival, then packing up the packets and shipping them off at layer 2 or below to Google, who's then handling the IP stack and up internet access. I'm also assuming the Great Firewall then acts above these layers since it's not blocking access on my phone.
If my inference is correct, I'd be curious to see if those responsible for the Great Firewall are aware of this deal Google has with a Chinese cellular provider and the technical specifics of how it works. Might we be seeing a softening of Great Firewall policies for foreigners, or just another soon to be inspected or blocked flow of traffic?
Anyway, I'd just love to hear from a knowledgeable engineer about how this works.
If you've read this far, thanks for your time and have a great day!
-- Best regards, Yury.