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China Telecom Companies Pledge To Stop Monopolistic Practices
hackingbear writes "China's two telecommunications giants, China Telecom and China Unicom, announced Friday they will substantially raise their broadband speeds while further lowering broadband costs by 35% over the next five years. They also acknowledge the existence of monopolistic practices in reply to a recently launched investigation, which is the first of its kind against major Chinese state-owned enterprises. Being state-owned companies, their profits supposedly belong to the nation, but they have also become 'golden rice bowls' for their management and employees, and their supervising departments and officials." If the Chinese government would like to investigate these companies' monopolistic behavior, I have a suggestion on where to start looking.
We can show you how to have a duopoly instead!
So this is probably a move by the Chinese government to expand internet access to more people.
Actually, this story was translated incorrectly. It reported that the Chinese telecoms promised to "stop monopolistic practices".
The correct translation is that they promised that they would "not come in your mouth".
See, Chinese is a very difficult language, and there is always a subtext.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They are lowering their broadband costs by 35%, but what about their prices?
in fonts where m looks like rn.
Yep, in Canada is different, we are capitalist country, without monopoly, and with free market, and.....actually with only two big telcos, but don't say that they are de facto monopoly, as we live in free country. No, no and NO. And the little fact that these two big non-monopoly free market companies are pushing the government to accept some bills which could effectively kill any competition is just naked, communist, anti-capitalist lie.
LOL... corrupt government is corrupt
Just wait till they start storming your country a la Red Dawn.
Gee, the article kinda sounds like it's talking about AT&T and Verizon. Except the part about them promising to raise bandwidth while lowering costs. "Golden rice bowls" definitely applies.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
What is amounts to is that America is about to keep them out of here due to their spying, but they are hoping that if we they open up what should NEVER have been blocked in the first place, that we will not close them down.
At this time, it is in the west's best interest for us to kill that idea as well as start raising trade barriers unless they will start honoring their treaty obligations.
Hopefully, O will not be as stupid or greedy as W/neo-cons were.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's not to say that American ladies have the right idea, it does nothing but hurt their case when they decide to avoid developing personalities to concentrate on being snotty and pretty
The funny thing is the flip side. There is nothing more bitter than a middle-aged woman whose beauty faded long ago, meanwhile the sexual attractiveness of men her age increases since they now make more money and have more sophistication than when they were younger.
The other hilarious thing? Look at those women who are snotty and pretty (but only physically). See the kind of guys they're with? They're assholes. They frequently mistreat them. Maybe they cheat on them. Their shallow nature and total lack of personality and sophistication long ago made them completely unattractive to smart, successful, kind-hearted men who are interested in long-term commitment and real love. Those men took one look at them and said "wow, what a total self-absorbed bitch, I've been with one of those before and let me tell you, it ain't worth it".
Every now and then you might encounter a real lady, a beautiful woman who doesn't use her vagina as a weapon of manipulation, who has a real heart and doesn't falsely think of that as a weakness, who reads a book once in a while, who respects herself enough not to let herself get fat, who is enough of an adult to understand that the only reason she would get fat or be bitchy is her own poor decision-making and no other reason, who has emotions but doesn't think they are a valid substitute for reason, and values a guy who is a gentleman and treats her with the kindness and understanding she deserves. This is a very, very rare individual. If you find one, treat her with great love and be certain to appreciate her for who she is and who she isn't, or else you commit a crime against nature.
There's just gotta be something wrong with that picture.
What next? "'The Cool, Fresh Taste of Marlboro Cigarrettes is the Opiate of the People' -- Karl Marx".
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Damn fool honkey! That is what black people be calling it.
No, I don't find it racist. Most stereotypes are true.
Golden rice bowl is (you probably could have guessed this) a Chinese idiom meaning a high paying, stable job. Besides, it's not a stereotype, almost all meals in China (and other Asian countries as well) have a rice component. The word for meal is the same as rice.
http://www.targetchinese.com/targetpedia/a-stable-high-paying-job/
I admit I startled a bit when I saw "golden rice bowl" but I figured it was probably a translated idiom. It's like when somebody refers to their average job as their "bread and butter".
but they have also become 'golden rice bowls'
Anyone else find that racist? It is equivalent to a story about black people calling it "golden fried chicken bucket". It's a lame stereotype. Can we not have these in the front page please?
The "Iron Rice Bowl" is actually an actual Chinese expression generally used to refer to a career in the Government service / Civil service. So it's not exactly racist. It's similar to the "Golden Parachutes" that they use to refer to Western severance packages.
The iron rice bowl means their source of food cannot be broken easily. Think of it as employment for life.
Golden rice bowl is probably the "1%" version of that.
In the south, yes. Most meals in the north of China are wheat based. Rice isn't uncommon in the north, but wheat noodles, wheat dumplings, pancakes, and bread are the bases for a lot of meals.
But rice is still used in a lot of expressions.
As an internet developer in China, I can tell you that the duopoly posed by these two companies is wrecking havoc on the Chinese internet. First, a bit of history:
Around 2001, there was only one company controlling most of China's internet access, and that was China Telecom. Jiang Mianheng, the eldest son of the Chinese President at the time, Jiang Zemin, took in hundred of millions in investment to start a new telecommunications company, China Netcom. They struggled for a while trying to compete, but China Telecom's dominance prevented them from getting much headway in the market. Jiang Zemin then used his massive leverage to break up China Telecom, and give 1/3 of its business, all in northern China, to China Netcom. This caused serious enmity between the two entities. Eventually China Netcom was purchased by China Unicom, the second largest mobile provider in China. So now you have China Telecom and China Unicom as the two major telecommunications entities in China.
Do to the bad blood between the two, the connectivity between the Unicom and Telecom backbones is utter shit. International lines are connected through Telecom's backbone through Shanghai and other hubs further south, so if you are on Unicom, expect international connections to be utter shit. I'm in Beijing, and most home and small business connections are on Unicom. 90% of the time international connectivity is slow or non-existent.
We have clients in Shanghai, which is mostly Telecom, our server is on Unicom here in Beijing, and they get dropped connections 1 out of every 5 or 6 requests. We had to set up a proxy in Shanghai to get around this. If you do a traceroute from a Unicom ADSL connection to a Telecom server, you can see response times jump to 300-400ms where the hand-off occurs.
It's fucking infuriating. You basically have to either build a convoluted topology and set up some serious monitoring, or pay exorbitant extortion fees and get on a BGP network to have solid nation-wide service for your customers. As a small start-up we are opting for the first for now.
Hopefully this government probe will also deal with these sorts of deeper issues as well, because these problems are seriously crippling the Chinese internet as a good place to do business.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
As a long term expat in china its nice to see some improvement in the Speed department. The internet here is besides being censored just slow here compared to...well somalia maybe. it also depends on location for example if your in BJ you can get (for $$$) lightningfast internet. But just outside the provincial border (hebei) its like 56k on good days and it does not matter how much you pay.
But i dont think its all greed. If there is the choice between malice and stupidity its usually the latter. China became a Developed country overnight, the roads and city designs are a great example of that. in 2006 the city of ningbo was just a well designed clean, nice and modern city. Today its still a modern city however with a 24/7 traffic jam. The internet is kinda like that. The existing infrastructures where not designed for THAT many people expecting Highspeed internet.
Respect the cock! And tame the cunt! Tame it! Take it on headfirst with the skills that I will teach you at work and say no! You will not control me! No! You will not take my soul! No! You will not win this game! Because it's a game, guys. You want to think it's not, huh? You want to think it's not? Go back to the schoolyard and you have that crush on big-titted Mary Jane. Respect the cock. You are embedding this thought. I am the one who's in charge. I am the one who says yes! No! Now! Here! Because it's universal, man. It is evolutional. It is anthropological. It is biological. It is animal. We... are... men!
FTFY
In soviet China, the government owns the largest corporations