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Thread ID: 130383	2013-04-08 01:44:00	Cheap net in China	baabits (15242)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1335883	2013-04-08 01:44:00	I've been in China for just over a year now- streets are disgusting, food is amazing, people are respectful (most of the time) and I'm still single :( But what I really wanted to talk about is the pricing of Internet here- how incredibly cheap it is. I paid 1400RMB to China Unicom the other month for my home connection. That gives me a year of fully unlimited, censored (but we have ways of getting around that, it's really only Google, Facebook and YouTube that are the big ones that are banned) Internet at a blazing 24mbit/sec. 1400RMB= NZ$267.9 by the way, and that included a loaner Wi-Fi box and installation charges. That's on a salary of about 12,000RMB/month (though that's a lot compared to the average Chinese person's salary of 3,000-4,000/month) China Mobile also offer line broadband at 5MBit/sec for 450RMB/year. Admitting that their network is heavily censored in comparison to China Unicom's, but nevertheless it's not a problem for Chinese people accessing their normal sites. Have things improved back home in terms of connection speed and caps? Have the prices dropped at all? I remember having Vodafone's 40GB plan every month for about $120 including home line and only getting around 8mbit/sec. I think I go through that in half a week now. :clap	baabits (15242)
1335884	2013-04-08 01:54:00	Nice post Baabits. Are you living over there? Where are you working?	Gobe1 (6290)
1335885	2013-04-08 02:01:00	For a *year*!! :-/ My goodness :(	Chilling_Silence (9)
1335886	2013-04-08 02:11:00	We think we are First World country! Its all relative You cant have $60k salaries and cheap internet. But as I have said before, we should be letlting our wages and real estate fall gradually so that we start to match China and the rest of Asia and South American, where are are trading to. We are selling kiwifruit and milk and wood - not Ipods, or hard drives! or plasma tv's. We also need more people living here to give our business economies of scale. Singapore is the size of lake Taupo and they want a bigger population. But someone will come on and say they like nice uncrowded beaches.	Digby (677)
1335887	2013-04-08 02:23:00	Nice post Baabits. Are you living over there? Where are you working? I began here as an English teacher- I finished my degree in linguistics and wanted to travel straight after. I started working for a big multinational, EF, and am still here now, though have become the psuedo IT guy for the region. I couldn't believe their server set up for three schools- a 4 year old desktop running XP at each school with a shared folder containing all student personal files, phone numbers, passwords etc and no security. Insane. I love it over here though. The money isn't much when you bring it back into NZD, but you can live a decent life (apartment, eating out every day, taxi everywhere) and still save about 5000RMB (1000NZD) a month- something close to impossible back home.	baabits (15242)
1335888	2013-04-08 02:27:00	We are selling kiwifruit and milk and wood - not Ipods, or hard drives! or plasma tv's. +1 And thats why the government(ie the country) is allways broke/borrowing, govt is spending like a 1st world economy, not the 3rd world farming economy we really are. :-) "streets are disgusting" . Is that just litter/rubbish or something else? I have to admit , some of the recent photos & vids I've seen of China took me by surprise. Everything looked new/modern. Not the cliché images Ive had burned into my mind over the last 30 years.	1101 (13337)
1335889	2013-04-08 02:37:00	Of course in South Korea or Japan you could pay $10NZ a week and get all you can use 4G mobile data or 1000 Fibre. I also think it's unfair to compare to Singapore, while the pop isn't htat diff their density is and maybe they get cheap labour from other countries to lay infrastructure etc ... I would think the road workes in NZ and the road engineers would get a nice salary. In Singapore a store rep can earn just $6/hr but the tax is basically nil. I think it's more fair to compare to say Malaysia. Before, I am sure Singapore had all you use 3G but that's gone now from what I seen with their 3 main mobile telco's. Like NZ's top cellphone postpaid plan and maybe 12GB of data it cost $200/mo. The data cap is larger yeah .. For fixed line, it's $400/mo for fibre 1000 or maybe $80 for fibre 300, maybe $40/mo for fibre 25 or 50 and in between for 100 and 150. All you use for fixed line. I know people in KR/JP who basically use 3G or 4G as their main internet connection, they Skype on it even when they are in their cars and paying for groceries :D IMO, if I had to pay for it, in KR/JP I would probably be happy with 4G even thou I could get fibre 1000 for thre same $10/week. In SG I think if I had to pay substantial more for faster connections, I would be happy with Fibre 25.	Nomad (952)
1335890	2013-04-08 02:44:00	+1 And thats why the government(ie the country) is allways broke/borrowing, govt is spending like a 1st world economy, not the 3rd world farming economy we really are . :-) "streets are disgusting" . Is that just litter/rubbish or something else? I have to admit , some of the recent photos & vids I've seen of China took me by surprise . Everything looked new/modern . Not the cliché images Ive had burned into my mind over the last 30 years . It's propoganda for China's 'face' . The truth is that people drop litter everywhere with the justification that 'if we don't drop it, the people who clean the streets won't have a job' . They piss and crap everywhere as well . Babies don't wear nappies- they just have a split in the front and back of their pants . When bubs is going to go toilet, mum holds him/her over a rubbish bin instead of taking them to a loo . Insane, but that's been the norm here for the past 2000 years, why change it?	baabits (15242)
1335891	2013-04-08 02:44:00	I remember when my father went to China on business 40ish years ago . Anti communist propaganda of the time had my parents a bit worried. Dad made sure he carried the "Little Red Book " everywhere with him ,just in case. Mum told me that "he could be put in jail just for using the wrong rubbish bin" My how times have changed :-) He bought back heaps of cool postage stamps for my collection, most showing Mao, the Army, or the people working away.	1101 (13337)
1335892	2013-04-08 02:47:00	Of course in South Korea or Japan you could pay $10NZ a week and get all you can use 4G mobile data or 1000 Fibre. I also think it's unfair to compare to Singapore, while the pop isn't htat diff their density is and maybe they get cheap labour from other countries to lay infrastructure etc ... I would think the road workes in NZ and the road engineers would get a nice salary. In Singapore a store rep can earn just $6/hr but the tax is basically nil. I think it's more fair to compare to say Malaysia. Before, I am sure Singapore had all you use 3G but that's gone now from what I seen with their 3 main mobile telco's. Like NZ's top cellphone postpaid plan and maybe 12GB of data it cost $200/mo. The data cap is larger yeah .. For fixed line, it's $400/mo for fibre 1000 or maybe $80 for fibre 300, maybe $40/mo for fibre 25 or 50 and in between for 100 and 150. All you use for fixed line. I know people in KR/JP who basically use 3G or 4G as their main internet connection, they Skype on it even when they are in their cars and paying for groceries :D IMO, if I had to pay for it, in KR/JP I would probably be happy with 4G even thou I could get fibre 1000 for thre same $10/week. In SG I think if I had to pay substantial more for faster connections, I would be happy with Fibre 25. You're right haha. The problem here in China is that there's Wi-Fi everywhere and the mobile network isn't so well developed. So I bought an iPhone 5 recently (4400RMB Unlocked from Hong Kong) and got a simple data plan (96RMB/month for 4G, 4000 minutes calling and 300MB data) and it serves just fine :D	baabits (15242)
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