hi, i want to have internet in my new apartment, a friend of mine helped me call aipu (which uses the lines of china telekom) and they came very quick and threw a cable from the window of my apartment in the 6. floor to connect me to some box near the entrance.

ok. no objections, but after finishing the work and just before the guy wanted to cash the money (500 kuai for 6 months for 4M) i just wanted to test the connection, it was terribly slow, not more than 300kb, so i refused to pay him and asked him to take every thing back, still didn't pay and they never came back to disconnect me.

any way, i am looking now for an alternative, we called china unicom but they said in my apartment they can't connect me, i live in cheng cheng xiao qu.

any one can suggest some other providers?

will it be different if i call china telekom directly and ask them?

thanks

Why not get a 3G usb dongle internet connection. It's wireless. Don't have to worry about connecting it. Don't know how much it costs but maybe it might be better for you.

You got confused by different units.
Networks are rated in BITS, but what you see when you check some file's size on disk is BYTES. The same with bandwidth testing tools or your browser's "downloading" window- that's usually all in BYTES.

When a company sells you a 4M connection it's 4 MegaBITS, not 4 MegaBYTES

Now some math:
1 BYTE = 8 BITS
So, a 4 MegaBIT connection equals 0,5 MegaBYTE, and this is 512 kiloBYTES (kB).

Here is a simple calculator for this www.matisse.net/bitcalc/

thanks guys
@liuminke, yes i also have one, but if you start watching YouTube and making big downloads it is too expensive

@heniu, i feel how slowly it is by using it for normal surfing, it is really slooooow, my 3g connection with my mobile is considerably faster.

who are the major isps here? any body know
thanks

China Mobile
China Telecom
China Unicom

I think that's it! It's all government owned.

And they are all pretty much slow compared to back home.
We were even willing to upgrade to a commerical level of service, but the ISP could not do it as the local pipe was not big enough.

so it looks like this is the situation here, must live with it
thanks

You will also notice the speed changes with the time of day. I get the best response at about 5:00 a.m. Afternoon speed could not win a race with a snail.

Despite all the progress, China is still in many aspects a 3rd world country. In my area I've been to every provider, looked at every packet available and no matter what, it's just not possible to get faster internet since there are restrictions on private users and every single Chinese person streams shows and movies and you share the old cables with them. What's more, these days more and more Chinese people buy internet and TV in one, which means there's even more pressure on the many bottlenecks. Last year I was so desperate that I spent some guanxi on getting a commercial line (expensive stuff had it gone through, but worth it) but when they tested the copper, it turned out it just wasn't possible.

Service is slow, the gov want it that way. They know it affects commerce, but they see control of info as more important. They have said as much. I read it in the media about 2 weeks ago.
Sorry, can't remember where.