Slashdot Mirror
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!
They are lowering their broadband costs by 35%, but what about their prices?
in fonts where m looks like rn.
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.
I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not but the USA does have protective tariffs already. It was amusing to see the free trade agreement come in between Australia and the USA where the USA wanted tariffs to be removed off their exports but no mention was made regarding the USA tariffs on lamb, wheat and steel...
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/
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.
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.