Chinese Broadband Users Complain of Slow Connection Speeds, Terrible Customer Service

Life for an internet addict can be tough if you’re living somewhere where the fastest available internet connection is 4 Mbps. But it’s even more frustrating when you’re paying for a 4 Mbps internet connection but only getting 2 Mbps speeds. Zheng Dongfang Wang ran this story about a Mr. Guo who took the next logical step and tried to get some help.

4 Mbps bills for 2 Mbps service

Guo lives in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, and his internet service is provided by China Unicom, so he called the company’s customer service hotline. He was told to wait for a repairman to come check it out, but no one was available for nearly a month. Eventually, it turned out that from his repeated calls, Guo had multiple bug reports in Unicom’s customer service system, but that no one bothered to deal with any of them.

Eventually, Unicom did send two repairmen, who told Guo the issue was that the wiring in Chifeng was old and that there was no way for him to reach speeds of 4 Mbps. If he wasn’t satisfied, they told him, they would be happy to remove his broadband connection entirely. They also tested his connection speed using a device they had brought themselves and pronounced it to be around twice as fast as Guo says he has experienced in his own tests.

Woeful customer service aside, Guo’s case raises a question I’ve seen elsewhere on the Chinese internet: why are companies advertising broadband speeds in places where they can’t provide them? Does this constitute a kind of false advertising? At my own apartment here in Beijing, I pay for 4 Mbps service. A test on speedtest.net just now gave me a speed of just about 3 Mbps for both download and upload, and in the past I’ve seen it as low as 2 Mbps. Obviously it would be difficult for the broadband company to provide a connection that is constantly exactly 4 Mbps. But if my connection isn’t capable of reaching 4 Mbps at all — I’ve never seen it that high — isn’t it false advertising to suggest that what I’m buying is a 4 Mbps connection?

Of course, this isn’t just a problem in China. The gentlemen from Penny Arcade suggested a solution to this problem all the way back in 2009:

Something tells me my broadband provider here in Beijing would have a problem if I paid them less than the price that’s posted on their flyers. Still, though, it would only be fair. Perhaps China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology should consider regulating the way broadband providers are allowed to advertise speeds. Or, testing connection speeds in the homes of random consumers to make sure they’re living up to their promises.

[Zheng Dongfang Wang via Sina Tech]