Hi, in the next few months there is a good chance that I will relocate to Kunming. I need reliable internet access in order to work remotely for my US based company. Can some of the forum users let me know what the cost of internet is and how reliable it is?
thanks
We've been paying 1200 per year (in advance) with China Telecom. It's been relatively stable. I do notice that the connection slows down quite a bit in mid-afternoon, probably from volume of users.
If you're doing things for work or need to access sites like Facebook or YouTube then you will need to invest in a good VPN package that offers SSL plus high encryption.
Where you live in the city is important.
My housing development, although new, has poor infrastructure. China telecom refused to provide a 'faster' commercial internet service, as it was the infrastructure that was slowing it down.
Don't expect anything like broadband. They call it broadband, but it is in fact only wideband at best. The Chinese government has been complaining to the telecom providers to give better service, but nothing seems to be happening.
Perhaps we could do a quick survey on here, and people publish the speeds that they actually get. Best, normal, etc. And the district where they are living, if not the development they live in.
The informal survey results would be great!
In 2010/2011 I lived on longquan road in the apartment complex taiyangxincheng.
That building seemed to have better infrastructure (LAN wiring in the whole building) than the other places I've lived.
We paid China Telecom for a package that included home phone, 2 mobiles and 4Mbit internet.
However, it appeared that China Telecom were sharing a bandwith pool in my apartments floor/building. During the day I would get 20Mbit internet (downloading at 2MB/sec), but at night when everyone came home, it would drop to less than 100K/sec until sometime after midnight.
Now I live in a different apartment complex on the northside and pay China Unicom for 4Mbit access. In the daytime it's fine. At nighttime it drops dramatically again. :(
20M is pretty disappointing at our place. At noon, some Chinese speedtests report 1MB/s download and 100KB up. But access to the outside world doesn't get a lot faster. My torrents stay at around 500KB/s.
@bluppfisk
Who do you use for Internet? How much is it?
@bluppfisk
Who do you use for Internet? How much is it?
Dianxin. It's 199 a month and some 500 to install if there's no optical wire running to your dwelling yet. That 500 could've been spent better, as they've run a cable from the distributor box in the hall downstairs, through the main door, four flights up on the outside of the house, in through the window and then through our own door. This way anyone can cut our internet and it looks stupid, a wire waving in the wind.
But at least the bottleneck has been found. Turns out it was the WiFi router. A software upgrade and reset took care of that.
Downloading at 2.5 MB/s now, when the stars are aligned, but otherwise pretty fast too.
