[photopress:IT_broadband_user.jpg,full,alignright]China Telecom has announced that half of Shanghai’s families subscribe to broadband. Depending of your definition of broadband.
Shanghai Telecom, the city’s largest fixed-line phone operator says that Shanghai’s broadband subscriber base has passed three million already, 15 times up from 2002.
About 85% of Shanghai Telecom’s broadband users are accessing the Internet at more than two Mbps (megabits per second.) It is a stretch to call this broadband when there are people happily using speed 50 times high than that.
[photopress:broadband_new.jpg,full,alignleft]I am sitting in a hotel in Bangkok at the moment bitterly complaining about the speed of my connection. I have made a not-very-good-image of it but it shows that it is running at a far greater speed and I would still not call it broadband. But a dictionary definitions read: ‘A classification of the information capacity or bandwidth of a communication channel. Broadband is generally taken to mean bandwidth higher than 2 Mbps.’ And, letting everyone off the hook, ‘Generally refers to connections to the Internet with much greater bandwidth than you can get with a modem. There is no specific definition of the speed of a “broadband” connection but in general any Internet connection using DSL or via a Cable-TV may be considered a broadband connection.’
‘Broadband is high-speed, always on communications that is capable of carrying voice, video and data simultaneously. This definition has several parts. First: “high speed”. Generally, this is up to about 2 megabits per second (2 Mbps) or even faster. Second: “always on”. This means that you can log on instantly (no waiting, as with dial-up service).’
By that definition, not by mine, Shanghai has broadband connection.
80% of Shanghai Telecom’s users have selected the more expensive four MBPS package. The number of broadband users on China’s mainland has already hit 122 million, the highest in the world, according to the Ministry of Information Industry.
Hua Ruiqiang, Shanghai Telecom’s senior manager said, ‘The efficiency and popularity of broadband ensures that people are using more online applications.’
Source: Jongo News
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