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The World's Largest Phone Network China Mobile Censors Content -- Even in the United States (washingtonpost.com)
Isaac Stone Fish, reporting for The Washington Post: On Monday, the U.S. Department of Commerce recommended the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deny a license to China Mobile, the state-run company that is the world's largest phone network by subscribers. (It reaches more people than Verizon and AT&T combined.) The Commerce Department suggested the move because of the national security risk China Mobile poses. Indeed, because China Mobile is an arm of the Chinese state, there are legitimate concerns that Beijing could use it to gather data on American citizens. There is, however, a previously unreported concern with China Mobile that adds to worries about the company's suitability in the United States.
According to several interviews with frequent Chinese travelers to the United States, those with China Mobile as their carrier are often unable to access American websites and apps that are banned in China. A Chinese journalist who regularly travels to the United States for work, and who asked to speak anonymously, said she couldn't access Facebook or the New York Times in the United States with her China Mobile number. Even Google Maps is banned, leading to some frustrating travel experiences. When she was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, the Chinese journalist said, "it took me a long time to find her place because my VPN failed me and I couldn't use Google Maps." She was referring to a Virtual Private Network, a method that some Chinese use to circumvent the Chinese censorship apparatus.
According to several interviews with frequent Chinese travelers to the United States, those with China Mobile as their carrier are often unable to access American websites and apps that are banned in China. A Chinese journalist who regularly travels to the United States for work, and who asked to speak anonymously, said she couldn't access Facebook or the New York Times in the United States with her China Mobile number. Even Google Maps is banned, leading to some frustrating travel experiences. When she was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, the Chinese journalist said, "it took me a long time to find her place because my VPN failed me and I couldn't use Google Maps." She was referring to a Virtual Private Network, a method that some Chinese use to circumvent the Chinese censorship apparatus.
Much bigger problem is that it isn't against the law for private corporations to censor. While we rightfully condemn China Mobile for blocking NYT, there is no law preventing, for example, AT&T from doing the same.
Who is surprised by this? This is SOP for them and exactly what is expected. In all likelihood, it is a legal requirement for Chinese telecom services.
China makes a lot of stuff, they act in some ways like a modern country, but in fact they are a communist totalitarian state - and now (with Li's "presidente for life" declaration) a dictatorship. This is what they are, and this is what they do.
... we prefer our censors and guardians of CorrectThink (tm) to be private corporations like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, not the State!
They are roaming. This means, the data goes from the phone, to the cellular network, and then to the Internet from the cellular network.
If you are on Verizon and roaming in China, your phone number is still your USA phone number, your IP is a USA based IP address, and your traffic goes from your phone, to Verizon, and then to facebook or google or whatever.
If you are from China, on China Mobile, the same fucking thing applies. You are roaming. You maintain your phone number from China. Your network traffic goes from your phone, over to China Mobile's network, and exits that network. From there, you can go to Facebook or whatever - unless it's blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
This is how fucking roaming works. WTF, people?!
How the fuck is this even an issue or discussion?!?!
There are a lot of state-own companies in China. In fact, there are too many that the Chinese government wants to get rid of, but they tried (mostly in the 1990's) but cannot privatize those companies because most of those companies are highly inefficient and privatize them would cost a lot of jobs. So I don't understand what's this fear of Chinese state-own companies is about? If state-owned companies are a thing of threats, then the Soviet Union would be ruling the world today. This is all fear mongering.
By the way, China Mobil is not totally state-owned. They are a public trade company listed in Hong Kong Stock Exchange. And the company has to carry the mandate of the Chinese government to provide mobile network services to the remotest rural areas in China at an affordable price, unlike AT&T et. al, who couldn't even provide complete service coverage in Silicon Valley, so that would already damp its competitiveness.
While roaming, the Chinese user would connect to the to Chinese home network provider's packet gateway through a roaming interconnect which would connect the user out via Chinese Internet, not AT&T's network connection.
There isn't typically local breakout of Internet traffic to the roaming partner as operator specific services would break.