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All New Homes In China Must Have Fiber Optic Internet Connections
redletterdave writes "Only a small number of U.S. cities can boast fiber optic connections, but in China, it's either fiber or bust. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has now ordered all newly built residences to install fiber optic connections in any city or county 'where a public fiber optic telecom network is available.' The new standards will take effect starting on April 1, 2013, and residents will be able to choose their own ISP with equal connections to services. The Chinese government reportedly hopes to have 40 million families connected to fiber networks by 2015."
However, even China is offering something Google and Verizon aren’t here in the US: Open access, and the choice of multiple service providers once the fiber is installed.
Um, yeah so you can pick from China Telecom and China Unicom which are both -- SURPRISE SURPRISE -- state run and controlled providers. So, yeah, go ahead and select between Super Auspicious Provider A and Premium Auspicious Provider B and think you have a choice just like Cox and Comcast are two sides of the same inept coin.
According to the China Daily report, the Chinese government hopes to have “40 million families connected to fiber networks by 2015,” which is almost one-third of the country’s entire population.
Emphasis mine. Anyone see a believable plan on how that's going to happen? I mean, I bet every government hopes to have a third of its nations homes on fiber networks by 2015 ... that sounds like a rather expensive project that you're not going to see a return on until the state owned providers pay it back though. You've got a state owned and state controlled newspaper telling you about something unbelievably awesome enforcing some totally unrealistic (unless there are few fiber neighborhoods) regulation. Am I the only one saying that I will applaud them when it's actually in place and working?
2015 is two years away. Um, yeah, they had better get crackin'. Well, I guess when you can just force the poorer farming people to work for free it might be possible! That little project was called “Speed up the Roads and Enrich the People” hahaha. Here's your shovel, comrade. Now start digging until you're enriched.
The skeptic in me is just thinking that the home builders in China just need to pay off one more inspector to get a structure standing. Hell, their sheet rock and cement are clearly bribed through quality control -- why not structural, electrical and fiber officials?
My work here is dung.
How hard is it to learn Chinese?
in any city or county 'where a public fiber optic telecom network is available.'
Any how many of these houses will meet that rather essential qualification?
Hell, I could install a fiber network in my house and run it out to the curb. But that isn't going to make any difference if there is nothing to connect it to, now is it?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
This is one of the advantages of authoritarianism. If you have a good idea, you don't need to waste your time on democratic debate and procedures. You just impose it by decree on 1.2 billion people. Nice.
There are some other things that all new homes should have: Sensors to turn off the lights where the room is empty, higher R insulation (most building codes require much less than actually makes sense), and brackets for solar panels so when the cost of solar panels falls to a reasonable level, the brackets are already there (if the brackets are retrofitted in later, that can more than double the cost).
you can choose from Red Army #3 ISP, or Domestic Security Glorious Revolution ISP #1, or Internal Enforcement ISP #7...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
One of the benefits of government-run everything is that big infrastructure is easier to mandate and implement. The downsides are, well, freedom...
Infrastructure is one of the few things that the free market manages badly. Sewer, garbage, electricity, communications, and roads have all fared poorly when given over to for-profit corporations. Almost always the service is poor, overpriced, and under-maintained. With government control of the same, it happens less often (but still too often). And then there's the hybrid systems... they're economic lovecraftian horror beasts, devouring everything it comes in contact with. Take taxi medallions as an example... horrible, horrible idea. I can feel its tenacles wrapping around my leg just thinking about it. Wait... OH GOD IT'S GOT ME! ARRG---(hold music)
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Bear in mind that China is building lots of new apartment buildings. This says "wire them with optical fiber, not CAT-5". The cost isn't that different. It's probably cheaper to have a big pipe to a building rather than multiconductor phone cables.
Duh. if the network IS AVAILABLE of course it will be installed. The cost is negligible if you do it with the other services.
This is just some bureaucrats trying to take credit for something that's already happening.
Just about all residential buildings are poured concrete. This includes the walls which carry the load. Most AC wiring is done externally. Fuck up an internal wiring run, and you might not be able to fish it out. This leaves installing external conduit as your only form of repair. The idea of running glass is a smart move as it doesn't suffer from corrosion, attenuation, and interference like twisted pair or coax would.
Life is not for the lazy.
This was the first thing that came to my mind as well. When the authoritarian government is requiring high speed internet access to every home, it can't just be for the public to have faster access to the censored internet. There has to be a bigger reason, and I'm sure it's more to do with upload speeds than download..
This space for rent, inquire within.
Typical Americanist standpoint. Incoherent, unqualified, unspecific complaint about "freedom" in the face of things that are ostensibly going to do quite well, or are already working well.
Oh no, people might not be charged exorbitant fees for terrible service by Comcast or, if they're lucky, another company as well. What an affront to Freedom (TM).
Quite the same as the Americanist approach to a national healthcare system.
That happens if the house is using slow Internet as well, so it really doesn't change much.
This standard is actually a good one, on its own.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Describe "small?" There's something like 20 million homes in the U.S. with a fibre internet connection. Not anything near the penetration of copper cable modems, but also nothing to ignore.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
... that bastion of open access to the Internet.
Very, very few Chinese even have homes that would warrant this. Look at the Australian documentary on China's "ghost cities" to see the sheer volume of unfilled condos that are vastly too expensive for about 99.9% of all Chinese to afford.
Since when is 40 million families 1/3 of 1.3 billion people? How big are these families? Either there should be another zero and it should be 400 million people, or this 1/3 claim is bogus.
40 million families represents ~10% of China's population, no where near 1/3.
If you are talking about the Internet, then "freedom" is a very relevant thing to talk about. That vague concept is what allowed the Internet to develop in the first place. That vague concept also drives commercial activity and allows customers to find merchants.
There are very practical economic implications of protecting individual liberties.
That is why China itself is not exactly ideologically pure itself in these matters.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I wish that they would do this sort of thing here but I just know that what would happen is that the government would cave into lobbyists that would then set up the regulations that didn't boil down to houses needing to have a fiber hook up but to pay the telcos to have fiber. Then the telcos could call it "building infrastructure" instead of "lining pockets".
But instead of creating the conditions for all people/companies to thrive the government they will keep trying to pick winners. In my area the government recently gave hundreds of millions to two failing pulp mills. The very word mill evokes images of 1920. "I goin' to quit school and work at da mill like me grandpappy."
ahh john, your lack of understanding of Chinese determination makes me laugh. you see john, china may be lacking some civil liberties, but it surely is not a country of lazy, uninspired sit-arounds like the united states. Im sure behind the red curtain they are laughing as hard as I am right now at your pathetic sentiment. Do you think once during the housing boom in the USA the US government had any interest whatsoever in securing USA as the top place for connectivity in the world? FUCK NO! Their primary concern was keeping that bubble going and letting bankers, banks, financial people, and home builders reap massive profits. The united states government could give a fuck about the american people technology wise, and *Anything* that has even benefited the american people IT infrastructure-wise has come from private industry (at a hefty bloated price). the united states government is a broken, useless, wasteful, retarded piece of non-working, never-will-work piece of shit, and our actual infrastructure (such as building the interstate in the 20th century - a new interstate for internet) will never be realized in my lifetime - and if china has fiber and the USA doesn't, it's going to make us look like a bunch of fucking retards.
Also john, the nice thing about China is that at least there is a quasi dictator in place to put a fucking foot down. Their said dictator, president, whatever they are - they can't be bought by hollywood. They don't give a shit about international telecoms OR hollywood john. The telecom companies and the entertainment industry have a huge vested interest in keeping your internet connection slow, so that you have a harder time pirating their material. Telecoms price gouge their bandwidth so that we never see true bandwidth increases, and the huge government subsidy's that *have* went to the telecoms with the intention of upgrading networks country-wide has been pocked by them blindly without anyone saying a word.
I look at china right now as the USA before world war 2. HUGE manufacturing capacity and industry, and with the nationalistic mind set can that “40 million families connected to fiber networks by 2015,” would seem trivial for them to pull off now.
You may not like the Chinese, but judging from their actions but at least they can't be bought and paid for like your precious USA gov
Keep China's high population, the latter's geographical repartition (mostly to the east), its economy's high growth rates by western standards, and the fact that it's a developing country (still under-equipped) all in mind. Not to mention its government's authoritarianism. In that light, 40 million connected households in two years is not unrealistic imho.
Governments are the most miserable owners of infrastructure -- except all others. I don't know of any case of a public infrastructure going over to private owners and then improving with better services, more complete coverage and lower prices. Even privatizing telecommunication infrastructures in Europa was no privatization of a public infrastructure, it was just allowing private companies to compete either on the shared infrastructure still owned by a company whose majority owner in turn was the government, or with their own infrastructure they had to built themselves.
So roads and other infrastructure are all expertly maintained by the governments that own them?
No, but at least they are there and don't (directly) cost anything to use. VA on the other hand just opened the "hot" lanes on it's portion of 495 around DC and gave the ownership and all revenue from the tolls to a private company (yet we still get to pay for the state police and v-dot to monitor and maintain it). They say the cost of the toll is to be based on traffic, but they basically have a free license to charge almost anything they want (e.g. people will bear). They also did this by selling out the "greenway" portion of 267 and for the few miles between Leesburg and Dulles we've watched the tolls creep up to outrageous rates since there is only minimal control (and again it's the State that pays for the cops and maintenance while getting none of the revenue). They've also given away the rest of 267 (which was a serious cash cow for the state) to the Airport Authority which just jacked up the rates and will do so again next year. And this has apparently worked out so well according to the "Representatives" that got it done that they want to do more of it, yet they keep saying we don't have any transportation budget...
It's true that for the most part there are other reasonable options (mostly sitting in traffic with everyone else) to avoid the tolls, but if the people that pushed this so far have their way all the major roads are likely going to be turned into toll roads that are owned by private companies that get all the money. Thank you, but I'll live with undersized and over potholed roads that I'm already paying through the various taxes meant to pay for it (but McDonnell is trying to screw with that by removing the gas tax...).
The question of freedom on the internet is completely different from the question of a free market building the infrastructure. You think that if the Chinese government would one day decide to give internet infrastructure into private hands, it would allow free usage of that net? The government would certainly still maintain its Great Firewall, it would still control what people do online, and it would probably mandate that every ISP, to get/keep a license, has to provide a way for the government to listen.
On the other hand, you can build a government-supported infrastructure and still give complete freedom of what people do on it, just like in the U.S. you can drive to whereever you want when using state-built roads (well, assuming there's a road going to that place, of course).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I thought the new rule is every new home must have a single point of connection to the internet via a Huawei router, with firmware version more recent than 8.2.2012.build 1346- known in the industry as the Beiging T Tap version.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In Portugal it's mandatory since 2009 to equip new buildings with fiber optic cabling from the front door to each apartment, two fibers for every client, and a telecom cabinet housing equipment ready to be connected to the service provider.
So they'll have fiber but won't be allowed to access the Internet. And every keystroke will be watched and analyzed.
If the point is to point out that a fascist totalitarian state can implement broad policies more efficiently, then that's not news; the Romans understood that since 249BC when they appointed Aulus Atilius Calatinus as dictator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator
But even the Romans understood that there were likely some unpleasant consequences to be found living in a totalitarian state. But hey, they probably had the best internet access times of anyone in the ancient world, right?
-Styopa
If everyone is connected at home, there will be no need for Internet cafe's. Traffic to/from homes in China is already traceable to the person who registered the telephone. I imagine that the fiber will work the same way.
i just read both of those the exact same way until i realized there was an "m" on Unicom, lol. i guess you're not alone.
I believe in karma, which is why, when I do something bad to people, I assume they deserve it.
How hard is it to learn Chinese?
Very.
Depends on what you mean by "learn Chinese". If you're only talking about the spoken language, then I'd argue -- from first-hand experience -- that Chinese will be easier in many respects than, say, Japanese or Korean. Just off the top of my head: Chinese is conceptually and grammatically quite similar to English: for simple utterances, like "I go to the store," the words parse almost as-is into Chinese as "I go to store" (only missing the article "the"), but translation into Japanese or Korean requires a major conceptual reworking into "store to go" (where articles are missing, prepositions are postpositions, verbs come at the end, and person is often implied by context). Chinese has no grammatical number or tense or person or gender, and verbs don't conjugate: and anyone, but anyone, who's struggled with "der/die/das", "está/estaba/estuvo", "touchez/touchons/touchent", "mouse/mice" and "goose/geese" but "moose/moose", will find Chinese incredibly easier in this regard.
Reading the linked article, I really have to say the author comes off as a horrible whinger. Of the nine concrete examples he tries to explain:
Basically, he comes across as a whinging, unworldly boob.
Even allowing for writing system issues, Japanese uses several thousand Chinese characters, with the added bonus that many of them have multiple, often quite different, readings, depending on the context. Imagine if the prefix "pre" was sometimes read as "fore" in some words, "pre" in others, and "front" in yet other words, but was always spelled the same. Chinese occasionally does that, but nowhere near as often, or as complicatedly, as Japanese.
Fail.
Japanese itself has at least three romanization schemes that I commonly run into: Hepburn, which most of us in the US will see and recognize as romaji (closest to "phonetic" spelling from an American English perspective); Kunrei, which the Japanese government uses on public signage in Japan to help foreigners (which has oddities like "zyo" for the sound spelled "jo" in Hepburn, and pronounced like the common given name "Joe"), and Yale, which was invented by academics for phonemic accuracy, but is horrid to try to read. So yeah, guess what? Languages not historically written in the Latin alphabet, and that have sounds not found in European languages, are a bitch to romanize. Have a look at the wild variations of Latin-alphabet spellings for Hebrew or Arabic words some day.
Fail.
Tonality? Even English has tonality, after a fashion. Try enunciating the difference between "record", the thing, and "record", the action, without changing your tone. Sure, Chinese has a lot more of it, and the truly tone-deaf must first learn to
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
We have, effectively, the same thing happening in Saskatchewan. Sasktel is the one and only true telephone provider in the province and it's mandated that every lot must have a connection with them (you don't have to pay for their service, but their wires must run to your house). They've recently introduced their fibre-to-the-premises service that will supersede existing connections. All new houses in our two largest cities are now getting fibre connections; old neighbourhoods are being converted one-by-one and smaller cities will start following suit once the big city rush slows down. So it's not just oppressive governments that can get this done, like other comments here suggest.
It is not 2-3 companies. It is just one company. They are all owned and controlled by the same group: Chinese gov.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So you'd rather pay thousands of dollars a year in tax than a dollar or two when you actually the roads?
All total for our 3 vehicles I pay maybe $1500 for "property" taxes and the tax on the gas we use (no hybrids or electrics). If I was forced to use the greenway everyday to get back and forth to work ($5.80 from one end to the other each way during rush-hours) I'd be looking between $2000 and $2400 for just one part of of the commute.
Of course, as you point out, they wouldn't (significantly) reduce the taxes if they sold all the roads out to corporations (they need money from somewhere after all).
So yes, I would prefer to continue to pay the "thousands" in taxes a year vs the "dollar or two" when I use the road.
Look up the ARPANet, the NSFNet and the current internet infrastructure.
The government did okay with what they had, but once private enterprise took over prices plummeted and coverage expanded hugely. I would say service got better too, but that depends on how you measure better.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I've seen some videos recently showing that its getting harder and harder to drive freely around the US.
Abusive Border Patrol Agents NM Checkpoint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2SkaRvKv8U
1.Our Village society from a talk by a UK aid worker back from Tibet, he promoted use of a Tibetan small self help private company who would do your website, distance IT etc, and no problem as they had a link to 40GB fibre optic interne, so could do job better than most UK companies re file size or connection, jams were at UK end as slow copper old telecom internet.
Regards Eion MacDonald