How Local Broadband Monopolies Trap Chinese Users in Slow Internet Connections

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As ‘things’ on the internet get bigger, so too have broadband speeds increased to keep up with them. These days, when multiple people in a household might be engaged in high-bandwidth activities like watching videos all at the same time, a fast connection is a necessity. For some people in China, though, it’s also an impossibility.

Although China’s major internet providers — telecom giants like China Unicom (HKG:762) — have been steadily increasing their available speed, smaller local broadband providers haven’t been following. And with major telcoms’s recent and free upgrade to 10M connections, some local users are starting to get pretty annoyed that not only is their internet slower, they don’t even have a choice in providers.

That’s because some local broadband companies have made arrangements with residential communities that give them a complete monopoly over ISP services to residents of the community. “Some real estate developers have totally shut us out,” a spokesman for Guangdong Telecom told the Guangzhou Daily. Basically, in some new communities developers hold open bidding for exclusive rights to be the tenants internet provider, and whoever lays down the most cash gets the job, no questions asked. Guangzhou Daily reporters spoke to representatives of one such community, who told them that major telecoms were welcome to apply to enter the community, but that they’d have to come to an agreement with the developers, the owner, and the local broadband company that owns the monopoly on the development before they were allowed in.

This kind of monopoly means that these local companies have no real reason to be interested in increasing the quality of their services, meaning that some users are stuck using connections that were perhaps fast years ago but now seem agonizingly slow because they just can’t stand up to the demands of the modern internet user.

It’s a complex issue, and one that doesn’t appear to be immediately solvable. But as demand for fast internet continue to rise, providers are going to have to up their speeds or face mobs of angry customers with pitchforks — or something like that, anyway.

[Guangzhou Daily via Sina Tech]