China has blocked the Apple Watch Series 3 from accessing LTE networks

Chinese owners of the Apple Watch Series 3, more specifically the version with LTE connectivity, received a rather unpleasant surprise in recent weeks. Out of the blue, LTE stopped working on their watch. As it later turned out, this service interruption occurred with all operators that offer this functionality. All of these operators belong to the state, and very soon it became clear that this was a regulation backed by the Chinese government.

According to the WSJ, so far it appears that Chinese carriers have blocked new accounts that have been created (or had an eSIM activated) in the past few weeks. These are new accounts that have not been firmly linked to other information about their owner. Those who bought the Apple Watch Series 3 at the very beginning of sales, and the operator has all their personal data at their disposal, do not have a problem with disconnection yet. The explanation is said to be that China does not like the growing number of users of this device, because eSIM does not give them such an opportunity to control what the user does and who he actually is.

Apple knows about this new disruption because it was informed by China. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology refused to comment on the situation. The operator China Unicom claims that the entire functionality of their LTE networks for the Apple Watch was only for testing.

Apple Watch Series 3 Official Gallery:

Gallery

watch-series-3-sportloop-two-newband

watch-series-3-sportloop-one-newband

watch-series-3-nike-newband-white

watch-series-3-walking-wristshot

watch-series-3-running-nike

watch-series-3-music-airpods

watch-series-3-jump-wrist

watch-series-3-hermes-singletour

watch-series-3-hermes-buckle

watch-series-3-heartrate-app

watch-series-3-dualcore-newband

watch-series-3-doubletour-newband

watch-series-3-ceramic-newband

watch_series_3_incoming_two_wrap

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In practice, the situation looks like those who managed to activate the special data plan from September 22 to 28 remained unaffected by this shutdown. However, everyone else is out of luck and LTE doesn't work on their watch. Not much is known about the remedy, but according to foreign sources, it may take months before the situation changes. This is another inconvenience for Apple that it has to deal with in China. In recent months, the company had to remove several hundred VPN applications from the Chinese App Store, as well as significantly revise the offer of applications that deal with streaming content.

Source: 9to5mac, Macrumors