Anonymous Coward User ID: 4999903 United States 05/24/2022 04:44 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | The Horrors of Authoritarian Communist China Chinese and American Mobile Phone Systems
LARRY ROMANOFF • MAY 21, 2022
At the risk of appearing to be a shill, I think it is safe to say that China arguably has the best mobile phone service in the world, certainly second to none, while the US and Canada have arguably the worst, surely the most fragmented and dysfunctional, and certainly the most expensive. Let’s look at some details.
I’m uncertain about the US but, so far as I am aware, in Canada and many European countries, mobile phones can be purchased only from a telecom company, one of the more clever but clearly anti-social provisions in Western communications legislation. This gives the phone companies a truly ‘captive market’ in that, if you want a particular phone, you have no choice but to submit to all that company’s policies and to pay their demanded prices. A major difference in the communications landscape is that Chinese phone companies do not have a monopoly on the sale of mobile phones and are in fact minority sellers.
To buy a mobile phone in China, you go to any one of thousands of shops in your city, each selling hundreds of different brands and models of mobile phones, and negotiate the best price you can get for the phone you want. And you CAN negotiate: “There are three shops across the street selling this same phone. Either give me a better price (or a free expensive umbrella, or a nice stuffed animal), or I’ll go there instead.” Some Americans will recognise this as “competition”.
After you buy the phone, you buy a SIM card (about $3.00), which contains your phone number, network connection authorisation, and some free air time. You insert the SIM card, turn on the phone, and begin making calls while still in the shop. That’s the whole process. Except for the SIM card, it’s the same as buying a toaster.
You can choose from various phone companies to provide service, but everything is pretty much the same and, while there are many various “usage plans”, you needn’t subscribe to them and can simply use your phone on a pay-as-you-go basis. Noteworthy is that in China you can change phone companies without changing your phone or your number. If you buy a new phone, you simply insert your old SIM card and everything is as it was. You can purchase a second (or third) SIM card and have different local numbers to use in different cities, if you want to do that.
For sure one of the best features is that the entire country is wired, even in remote locations. Some time back I was on holiday in Inner Mongolia and could happily send photos on WeChat while riding my camel in the desert. Given the extensiveness of wireless coverage, in more than 17 years in China I could count the number of dropped calls on the fingers of one hand. And it isn’t only China itself, but the entire Asian region that is seamlessly connected. I recently called a friend in Shanghai to invite him for lunch, and he said, “I can’t. I’m in Vietnam”.
If anyone from anywhere in the world calls me, the system knows where I am and my phone rings. I never have to think about service provider compatibility, roaming, and all the other restrictions that exist in Canada or the US. If I travel to Beijing, I receive a text message welcoming me and telling me my calls are now local calls. And in a sense, all mobile phone calls in China are ‘local’. The landline system still uses area codes, but the mobile phone system abandoned them decades ago and simply uses an 11-digit phone number, so calling anywhere in the country is the same. The system is so functionally useful that I cannot recall ever meeting anyone in China who had a personal or home land line.
The system also monitors abuses, presenting warning notices upon receiving a call from a number reported to belong to telemarketers or telephone scam operators. As well, the SMS system is used very effectively for some kinds of public notices like a simultaneous warning to 100 million citizens of an approaching typhoon.
Phone calls in China cost maybe $0.01 per minute, and SMS messages are the same for sending; receiving is free. The typical monthly cost for a smart phone in China, including typical internet usage, is maybe $15.00, compared to around $100.00 in the US or Canada, and sometimes as much as $200.00. Many young kids in China stream movies on their phones and can run up higher bills, but the $15.00 cost is probably typical and maybe even high. I should add that in China the ‘basic phone bill’ includes all the ancillaries which are usually sold at extra cost in the West: caller ID, call-holding, and many others.
International calls have a special provision: I first dial a 5-digit number before the phone number I’m calling and that automatically places me on some kind of heavy discount basis. Perhaps other countries have this feature now, but I can speak to a friend halfway around the world for less than $1.00 per hour.
Once on an extended trip to Canada I thought I’d buy a Canadian SIM card for my phone for the sake of convenience. That was a mistake. The phone company charged me $30 for the SIM card and another $30 as a “connection fee”. That last one rankled. In the days of land lines, the phone company had to send a man out to your house to physically connect your phone, so you paid a connection charge. But today there is no such thing as a ‘connection’. When you turn on your phone, the SIM card pings the tower and you’re connected. On my return to China, I discovered I’d lost my China SIM card; not a big deal but I didn’t want to lose my phone number. Happily, for 5 RMB (about $0.75), the nice girl at China Mobile reprogrammed a new SIM card with my old number and life was normal again.
There is one other item I would raise that seems to be primarily an American phenomenon: dirty tricks. One such was Marriott Hotels a few years back using illegal frequency jammers to block guests’ Wi-Fi hotspots and other such devices, shutting them out from the Internet entirely, then charging them between $250.00 and $1,000.00 per device to connect to the hotel’s own wireless network. A Marriott spokesperson with the unlikely name of Gaylord Opryland, claimed it was only “a security precaution” to protect hotel guests from “rogue Wi-Fi hotspots”, and that the hotel used only “FCC-authorized equipment provided by well-known, reputable manufacturers”, i.e., the CIA. The claim apparently didn’t fly with the FCC who fined the hotel chain $600,000 for the scam.[1][2]
I suppose it’s possible this kind of thing happens in China too, but I have never heard of it.
I once had that experience on a cruise ship traveling from Shanghai to Tokyo. As soon as we boarded the ship, even while still in port, all signals disappeared and we had no choice but to pay the cruise line’s exorbitant fees to be able to use our own phones. I refused just on principle, but I discovered there was one small portion of one lower deck where the jamming wasn’t effective, and I could still communicate with Shanghai until we were more than 300 miles out of port. No idea how the signal could carry that far, but it did.
Also, there is something unreal about the mobile phone market in North America. I don’t know if I can define it well enough to make it sensible, but it has overtones (or undertones) of what appears to be some combination of religion and ‘national security’. It suggests there exists something intrinsically mystical or inherently menacing about mobile phones and thus the rapacious practices of the phone companies are disguised as necessities to save the country from unspecified evils. Yet a mobile phone is nothing but a toaster with a SIM card (minus the toaster part). The propaganda of greed.
Of course, capitalists in China are just as greedy as capitalists everywhere, so the phone companies are usually on the lookout for a way to raise the price of something, and occasionally make attempts, furtive or otherwise, to raise rates or sneak in more charges. But if the people begin complaining, the government is not at all bashful about kicking the telecoms in the shins and telling them to roll back the price increases. And they do.
For a long time, it wasn’t possible to buy a Wi-Fi hotspot in the US, Canada, or Europe; these devices had to be rented at a cost of around $50.00 per month, and with about an equivalent monthly cost for usage. It seems they are now available for purchase, at prices ranging from around $100.00 to many hundreds, plus usage charges. In Canada, they seem to cost between about $300.00 and $650.00. Perhaps readers can update this.
In Shanghai, I have two phones and I tether them, using one as the Wi-Fi hotspot for the other and also for my laptop, so I always have my own Wi-Fi wherever I am. It’s possible to buy a dedicated Wi-Fi hotspot for $25 or $30, and pay around another $10 for usage, but my way is more convenient since my other devices connect automatically and I don’t have yet one more device to carry or one more battery to die when I need it. Plus, I have no bandwidth limitations, and never any service disruptions.
This is partially an aside, and you will no doubt hate me for telling you this, but the high-speed internet connection (DSL) for my home in Shanghai costs 500 RMB (about US$75.00) for two years, and that comes with at least 300 TV channels; I haven’t made an accurate count. On the other hand, Canada has the world’s highest internet costs at around $100 per month and showing no signs of decreasing.
The price disparities are not primarily from lower costs or wages, but that the mobile phone systems in Western (capitalist) countries were not designed for the people but for the mobile phone companies, resulting in the exclusive assigned regions, the resulting network and frequency fragmentation, à la carte menus, high costs and poor service. The few companies (with their assigned and protected markets) collaborate to keep prices high and prevent customers from escaping the trap. And US government protection of the telecom monopolies has been vicious: at least until recently, Americans would pay $500,000 and spend ten years in prison for unlocking a phone, the act represented as some kind of abhorrent immoral felony when it was merely a justifiable act of self-defense against a grossly-predatorial system.
China recognised that rapid communications and transportation were vital to increasing economic development, some estimates claiming China’s GDP is 15% higher than would otherwise have been without its current mobile phone system, and another 30% attributed to its nearly universal rapid transportation, especially the h |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 4999903 United States 05/24/2022 06:23 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: The Horrors of Authoritarian Communist China you will no doubt hate me for telling you this, but the high-speed internet connection (DSL) for my home in Shanghai costs 500 RMB (about US$75.00) for two years, and that comes with at least 300 TV channels |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 78713252 United States 05/24/2022 06:29 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: The Horrors of Authoritarian Communist China Are you locked down and locked in? |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 46832567 United States 05/24/2022 06:46 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: The Horrors of Authoritarian Communist China That's of course so when your ordered to locked in your home you can't have an excuse.
I agree the US is 3rd world compared to China |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 79231230 United States 06/10/2022 12:19 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: The Horrors of Authoritarian Communist China Chinese toilet paper is even better than US toilet paper. |
Crypto-Tard
User ID: 78144147 United States 06/10/2022 12:41 PM
Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: The Horrors of Authoritarian Communist China You are not asking the right question. Why are phones so good and so cheap in China? Mobile phones are the control mechanism and tracking system, along with street cams used by the CCP. It's a virtual prison. The entire country. When you are afraid of losing your life, you have already lost your life.
Don't be afraid. |