Internet Speed?
I'm moving to Zhuhai later this year from Kunming. How's the internet speed there in Zhuhai?
Here in Kunming it is disgustingly slow and getting worse by the month. I think China Unicom just can't keep up with the city's dynamic growth. Out dated infrastructure perhaps.
Has anyone speed tested the internet there? Much appreciate any feed back. Thanks.
It depends which provider you choose and what the speed offered (1MB, 2 MB, 4 MB. 6MB, 12 MB - apparently that exists!). We currently have 2MB from Zhuhai TV and the speed is horribly slow - definitely not even close to 2MB. But some others have different providers and higher speed and are very happy.
China Telecom should be the fastest, but I can't see the difference between 6mb and 4mb.
All speeds are not offered in all apartment blocks by China Unicom. It is limited by the available bandwidth in the internet infrastructure installed by the builder. We are in a fairly new building, circa 2007, and we were limited to 4MB.
Some sites are terribly slow, but that seems to be a site by site problem. For instance, this very site, is one of the slowest loading sites I ever access. The only thing slower are any Google sites, which are obviously being messed with by you know who.
Otherwise, 4MB seems fast enough for me.
Sorry, I meant China Telecom....
And I also had a Zhuhai TV connection a few years ago and it was slow and not very reliable. Avoid them if you can.
Yeah, we had no choice in our garden as China Unicom with its 4MB advertised 6 months before they were actually able to give this connection to people so we had to go with Zhuhai TV as for some weird reason China Telecom also didn't want to service us. We will try 4MB of China Unicom next time around - hopefully we will at least have something resembling 2MB.
If you start picking, at least get it right yourself. It should be MB and Mb - there is no such thing as mb :o) And if YOU do your homework, you will find that there are many people who get confused by these abbreviations.
Have a nice day! :o)
Anyway back to the topic ;) ... I will go for China Telecom over any other service provider... but sometime you have to put up with the poor customer service. I opt for 4M line and got a free upgrade to 6M ... Frankly, i dont really see big differences between 2M and 4M lines...
One thing you can consider too is having a broadband from China Unicom. Last I checked, it cost RMB300 for 3 months and you get 9M data limit for the duration. After which you have to reload RMB300 for the next 3 months. If you do not have the USB modem, it can be purchase for RMB200.. I have not tried using the service so I could not comment on the speed and coverage.
My experience with Zhuhai TV is very different of the one of DaveB. ZHTV (ZHTV.com, Xhiangzhou Yinbin N. Road ZHTV building Tel 0756-226691)installed Internet connection on same day we asked to get and works much better than the two others we tested before in Zhuhai.
Of course, it doesnt work very fast especially on Google. But if you take a chinese instead a western internet, it works much faster, is rather reliable. ZHTV customer service included in the 900 hundred per year redevance is very good. You only have to call them at 0756-2266911: they try to help you solve the problem by phone and if this doesn't succeed, they come if possible instantly to repair. Even our house is a rather old one for Zhuhai, they always succeeded to repair our or their defaults on same day, usually in less than two hours. Even with free replacement of some defective parts they were not responsible of such of our Modem to PC cable
Perhaps I'm lucky but, personnaly, particularly because the quality of their customer service, I woul recommand ZHTV: I never got such an efficient free of charge customer service in France or Switzerland...
I will agree on their customer service: WAY better than China Unicom which we are using ATM (with these guys we actually had to almost threaten that if the modem is not in place within 1 hour - after waiting for 4 days from the time we paid them and the line was in place - we will come for our money. It took A LOT of phonecalls in both English and Chinese to have the problem fixed. And apparently the issue wasn't the modem - they simply didn't activate our connection so neither ours nor their modems worked).
But you are right - if you are using foreign websites, google, skype etc ZHTV connection is extremely slow.
Hmm...that's a tough question!
The internet connection at Delta Bridges is pretty fantastic, but my internet connection at home just chugs along. Back in Canada, I was used to getting at least 1 mbps on most downloads. The fastest I've ever reached in Zhuhai is maybe 200 kbps, and that's on a good day. On the other hand, I can usually play videos online with just a moderate amount of buffering, so it's not so bad. Just don't expect blistering speeds!
China telecom is now offering 20M fiber connection, also you should be able to try it out 3 months for free. To see if your area is connected you can visit this webpage
http://dlgxq.189.cn/area/proIndex.action?areaId=44
if you don't trust random links from new posters :) , which i generally don't he he.. then you can call to 10000(china telecom customer service line) and they should give you the same address.
I haven't tried this myself yet .. as our area is still not connected. The area need at least 50 people of 10 % of the people in the area to go and click. After you collect enough clicks you need to wait up to 50 days for them to acually connect your building.
The free tryout is based on already having a connection. Went to figure out what connection we actually have. Turns out its a 4Mbps line for 169,- per month, however it is upgraded for free to 12Mbps for a year (about half of which has passed)
So it seems they will keep charging 169 even though a 4Mbs line can be acquired cheaper now.
It is also worth knowing that by paying for a full year in one go, you only have to pay for 10 months.
We actually switched to a 8Mbps line, and will get free cable tv through that as well (saves the 30-40RMB per month for ZHCATV) The China Telecom tv channels are pretty much the same, except they do not have the Hong Kong channels included in the normal ZHCATV package.
The 20Mbps option is available to Hua Fa phase 5 buildings. I will assume it is not worth the money as the Great Firewall of China will kill the speed of any international internet traffic.
some very good information morten
right now I am on the 169rmb a month 4Mbs like you were before.. how much are you paying now for the 8Mbs + cable tv?
does anyone know how I can find out if the 20Mbs is available in my building in Huafa century city? I would call 10000 but pretty sure they don't speak English ,
The 8Mb + Cable TV is 148 per month. I think the "free" cable tv can be part of any of their packages. There is also "free" landline included in our package. (I think originally we got the choice between free landline or getting a mobile phone with free subscription but a charge for usage)
Note. Previous message was written before the Chine Telecom guy had been here with the cableTV box.
The impressions of the cable TV are.
Compared to using a "standard" set top box with ZHCAT the image quality is lower, there is a tendency for mpeg artifacts in the image if there is much movement.
Changing channels can be done at an OK speed, however the first 1-2 seconds after changing the video is at a lower framerate.
There is a tendency of video and audio being slightly off sync.
The box has other features such as video on demand, there is the option of getting ppv movies (I think 20 per month, or maybe per movie), there is different TV Shows on demand, e.g. all episodes of Voice of China and some games and some karaoke stuff.
There seems to be no way of getting English menus on the box and therefore I have no idea what the two USB ports on the box are good for. Also, as there are several paid services on the box, it is a little dangerous to use without knowing when you accept something to be charged to your account.
The final point, which is what kills the whole concept is: The box needs to be plugged into a network connection, and this needs to be a different plug than what the internet-connection is using. So TV and network plugs needs to be physically in range. We don't have that, and despite the China Telecom guy giving us a very long network cable I doubt we want that on the floor from one end of the apartment to the other.
So.... Can anyone advise which company is best for GongBei area? I need to get internet for my office and want to try to get fastest speed possible since we do a lot of uploading and downloading (China/HK servers). Is there a way to check what max speed is in our building? Or are all companies same reliability/speed?
I have a peculiar dilemma....
My office building management recommended I speak to a specific contact of his who handles internet in most of the building. They gave me only 2 options, both of which she said were through China Telecom, but no other choices:
- 20M (down) / 2M (up) for RMB $479 per month- this also includes 2 cellphones with voice and data access for 1 year.
- 20M (down) / 20M (up) for RMB $4000 per month
However, we later went to China Telecom directly to check on their options, and they said our building can do up to 100M (down), but upload is maxed at 2M.
The pricing is better at China Telecom, but since we do a lot of uploading for our company I'm wondering if anyone thinks it is at all possible in gong bei to get 20M upload? How would she be able to do this if CT says they can not?
@StMaro.
There is 4 factors at play here
1. what you landlord says - maybe by going through "his guy" they get a "service fee", however, maybe they will not allow other solutions for the building.
2. what China Telecom says - generally I think they are pretty good, they prices drop or speed increases, they will always try very hard to suggest a 1 year contract so you save a months cost. I cannot predict, but for me it has been better to just wing it and run per month and then change the speed as the prices drop or their offers change
3. what China Telecom actually delivers - have had zero problems with them, speed up ad down is as advertised.
4. what speed you can get through to the rest of the world - this is where you most likely will be disappointed no matter the outcome of 1,2 & 3
Checked with landlord, and said it didnt matter who we use.
China Telecom is telling me no contract, and price is RMB 328 for 50M/1M, or 488 for 100M/1M.
My biggest concern is upload speed, and Telecom says no faster uploads. I've checked with China Unicom and they will not provide faster uploads either. So I just don't understand how the landlords contact is promising 2M or 10M or even 20M upload speeds, at same time not offering any business card or company name.
Also, the landlord's contact keeps telling us that she is going to report us to the China Telecom management if we install our 20M/1M account, because she insists it is not a "company" account and is illegal, even though we have talked to the China Telecom managers at their branch directly who have all laughed and said to ignore the crazy lady. Anyone come across this before?
You mean 2mb for the internet speed, not 2MB!
Your internet speed is measured in megabits per second whereas your download speed on your machine is measured in megabytes per second.
Time for you to do some homework.