Tonight I’d like to talk the Internet service on Mars – again!
If you happened to be moving to an apartment on Mars needing to install broadband Internet, think twice before you do so.
Olympus Mons’ official telecom seems to operate different from other craters and when I inquired about home Internet service, I was told that I could install either 1M connection at ￥140 or 2M connection at ￥150. Obvious the price difference was to lure people to pay for the higher bandwidth. But wait – did I say 1M and 2M, anything else?
Nope, there was not any thing higher than these two. But I thought I’d just get it installed anyway – although my experience was that it was a painful process to get the wireless modem to work with both Mac and windows, and the bandwidth was not at all impressive. But at least I could watch TV drama online without needing to worry about transfer volume.
“Does the wireless modem work with Macs?” I asked the customer service rep at the Telecom.
“Sorry, miss, this option is not available. You will have to buy your own wireless router”.
“You mean you not have it?”
“No.”
“You mean it’s only wired?”
“Yes.”
“What if it doesn’t work on my mac if I buy my own router?”
“It’s not supported.”
FINE. Very helpful. And I don’t think I want to go through all that hassle myself without being able to secure a technical support person… for 2M!
Deciding that this is no longer an option, I tried out China Mobile 3G modem which offers much cheaper rate. To make a long story short, don’t even bother – you can hardly get onto the 3G network and it’s practically always on edge mode (even at the centre of the city), which is on snail speed. And it keeps disconnecting too which is extremely annoying.
If you are looking for fast wireless access without the hassle of setting up, the 3G wireless USB modem is still the best choice with downloading speed up to 7.2M.
And yes, watching clips fro tudou is absolutely fine!
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