A Need for Speed, Faster Broadband is coming

China Telecom's fiber optic network will cover Shanghai's urban region, or 6.5 million families, with speeds of up to 20 megabytes per second, five to 10 times faster than the current level.

Shanghai residents will be able to subscribe to faster broadband service by the end of this year, the city's biggest broadband service provider said on Wednesday.

China Telecom's fiber optic network will cover the city's urban region, or 6.5 million families, with speeds of up to 20 megabytes per second, five to 10 times faster than the current level.

Broadband users often complain about service because of the high price and low speed compared to other countries.

The new service will cost 180 yuan (US$28.6) each month, compared with about 120 yuan now.

The carrier promised to drop the fee by at least 20 percent by 2015.

The Beijing-based Data Center of China Internet said 91 percent of users had broadband speeds of less than 400 kilobytes per second in the third quarter of last year. The average cost of a 1-megabyte-per-second bandwidth on China's mainland is four times the equivalent cost in the US and 400 times more than in Hong Kong.

May 16, 2012

Continue