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back to article China puts the boot up ISPs to close digital divide

China has pledged to increase broadband speeds and reduce the price of internet services in the country, which can be up to four times more expensive than those in rival countries including the UK and US. AFP reported that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology wants to close the digital divide in the west of the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wonderful....

    ... even more Chinese script kiddies and "hackers" trying to break into my server or trying to use it for relaying spam.....

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      catch 22

      Allow the masses cheap access will increase the amount of dissent put on the web.

      At least keeping it expensive self regulates it and won't fill the prisons too quickly.

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  2. John McGhie
    Coat

    Have you been to China?

    I suspect you guys haven't been there.

    If you had, you would know that any self-respecting Chinese hacker is leaching bandwidth from the closest major institution's WiFi, so they don't pay anything.

    What we in the West seem to have missed is that most Chinese quite LIKE their government. They treat it a bit like we do ours: ignore it and sling off at it when it gets too silly. But they don't have to put up with the drivel served at breakfast from Canberra, Washington, or London in quite the same way that we do.

    Chinese officials making statements in the public media are expected to get them relevant and "true". That would be a hell of a challenge for our lot...

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Have you been to China?

      I have many times and thats the impression I got, plenty of support for government, and fairly free in terms of what you can do, more so than we are in some ways..

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  3. Christian Berger

    Many countries do that

    In the olden days when the German phone network was still state run, there was a pledge to give everyone access to a certain minimal level of service. I think at the time of privatisation it was ISDN. Unfortunately after privatisation this hasn't been updated. If they kept it at the pace of time, we'd now have 16MBit everywhere, perhaps even more.

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  4. mhenriday
    Pint

    Hope the Chinese central government

    does indeed succeed in forcing ISPs to offer better coverage to consumers outside the major cities in the eastern part of the country. That would, I suspect, help to contribute to reducing the great geographic inequalities in economic development which exist there. Other countries with a poorly served rural population will no doubt look upon these efforts with great interest....

    Henri

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