One more reason to hate China Telecom this Spring Festival

February 5, 2008

Ok, so I’ve got to pause a moment and reflect on this.

China Telecom, the only ISP in Suzhou that I know of, not only provides me with a connection that is about as slow and inconsistent as I am, and staffs their “technical” “service” department with dorks that have less education than my stairwell sweeper, but now, now they’re infecting that retardedly slow and censored connection with fucking ads!

Somewhat randomly as I’ve been browsing over the last couple days I’ve had the site I was attempting to get to be halted and was then confronted with five seconds of these (click for bigger versions):

ctspringfestivalad.jpg ctspringfestivalad2.jpg

Ugh.

What’s even more worrisome is that this insertion method between random Web page visits blatantly says “Guess what, we’ve got the technology to know where you’re going and what you’re looking at.”

18 Responses

  1. Dear god NO! Having just moved apartments through the ice and snow, I only 2 days ago got my first china telecom adsl account and am supremely surprised at how crap it is. I previously had some kind of cable doodacky that came with my cable TV, that was great. The decision to infect content like that is supremely stupid but not surprising. They do it because they can.

    Reply

  2. I have a supposedly 6Mb China Telecom ADSL connection … which sometimes reaches the heady heights of 40kbps which operating transpacific or (try not to think about it) back to Europe.

    It’s normally pretty fast within China though (that’d be about 0.5% of the websites I visit) and, touch-wood, I haven’t got any of those bloody adverts yet.

    But I do have a fever and, according to SingHealth, gastroenteritis, so I’m off for a lie-down …

    Reply

  3. I live in Nanjing, and these insidious little ads have been showing up since at least mid-September. They’re a real pain in the butt since I do everything I can to avoid seeing ads from websites to begin with. I never did see this kind of thing in Canada, so chalk it up to another grand innovation for the Chinese.

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  4. remember back in the day when the web was new and everyone thought ‘hooray. it cant possibly be restricted’ and ‘now the world will have free access to information’ etc?

    i’m filing that next to flying cars in the realm of things-we-were-promised-and-never-got.

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  5. @Nick: Welcome to the suck. 🙂

    @Byron: I keep tossing back and forth whether or not to upgrade my account to a higher speed one. I asked the extremely helpful support staff at CT’s heavily touted customer service line and they told me it’s definitely faster. I asked if they guarantee it to be faster all around and they said that it’s definitely faster. Knobs.

    In the end I figured that if I’m not getting the full speed out of my 2M connection, there’s little chance switching it to the 4 or 6M is going to make a huge difference.

    @Dorian: I did notice an ad pop in every once in a while previously – but these the other day it was on every fourth or fifth page load. I agree, right pain in the pigu.

    @Kellen: Right beside ending world hunger, a cleaner environment and super-cool VR.

    Reply

  7. Wow. I am using Shanghai Telecom and so far nothing like that, fingers and toes crossed. So there’s really no way to turn the ads off, perhaps even pay them more? I’d certainly investigate the possible existence of alternative providers, even if it’s probably gonna prove fruitless.

    Oh well, xin nian kuai le!

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  8. Okay … just got my first ad, and it confused the hell out of me … until I remembered this post.

    Ryan – would you be interested in doing some sort of speed test and comparing results?

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  9. here’s another reason to hate them: retarded, flaky, half-arsed broadband…

    i’ve not been able to access facebook for 2 days now. it’s not blocked (so it’s nothing to do with Net Nanny), it’s just that a lot of overseas-served websites r inaccessible now.

    what’s inaccessible exactly? so far, i cannot get into: facebook, hotmail, autoblog, engadget, NY times, and a few others. what on earth is going in?

    is this perhaps related to the internet cables being cut in the middle-east? but, i’ve asked skype contacts in northern & southern china, and they can all access those sites which i can’t get here from Jiangsu-area China Telecom.

    any-one else in Suzhou/Jiangsu also suffering from this? Ryan…?

    Reply

  12. I am so angry, an angry white man.

    Cannot get to hotmail, or http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin
    (naturally my favourite sites)

    China’s Net Granny says CNN is just fine, google comes in at 0.8
    seconds. That is amazing, from China to the States and back again. However, to view the Australian Broadcasting Commission website I have to back door it.

    I miss my streaming audio, which is first class from their site.

    Feel like taking out the intruder bashing stick from the bedside and whacking some c**t at China Telecom.

    This is unacceptable, but sigh….arbitrary web site denial is part and parcel here.

    Oh, to be in the land of the free, with their first amendment rights. In Australia, anything goes, apart from kiddie p**n.

    That will get you 20 years in the Clink.

    Meanwhile, I am doing the radar on any teaching gigs here in Suzhou.

    Yeah, been getting those annoying pop-up ads too.

    Hope you and Maggie are keeping warm. Yuki and I have been snuggling under the quilt with the electric blankets on. Got to catch up with you two soon.

    Happy New Year *BANG*

    Jamieson

    Reply

  13. Oh, forgot to mention. 3 degrees here in Suzhou, snow up to my throat. Forget riding the bike in the bike lane. Sorry to be so annoying
    but I have 20 packets X 6 sachets of pea and ham soup instant mixes coming. I am salivating.

    J.

    Reply

  14. If you can reach this site it has some good info about bypassing censors, but not sure it will help with the ads…

    http://www.boingboing.net/censorroute.html

    I use China telecom, but also use an AT&T network to logon to my work computers, and noticed that helps with the ads a little.

    A good ad blocker would be helpful, but I have not found one I like yet.

    Reply

  16. Pingback: Thoughts on China | rice again

  18. Following another post, these adds look like coming from “family001.com”, nice name for a crappy ads nest…
    I’ts possible to add “127.0.0.1 family001.com” in your hosts file on windows to block it 🙂

    Reply

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