China's Great Firewall Slows Web Speed Across its Border

choi

Paul Mozur and Carlos Tejada, China's 'Wall' Hits Business; Firms say censorship slows Web connections, curbs access to services. Wall Street Journal, Feb 4, 2013.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 77511385052752.html

My comment:
(a) That Great Firewall of China slows Internet across China's border is nothing new. What the report brings to the table is the graphic.

"In the Ranks[;] Average internet-connection download speed rankings in the third quarter [of 2012], in megabits per second

#1 South Korea****14.7Mbps
#2 Japan*********10.5
#3 Hong Kong*****9.0
#4 Switzerland*****8.7
#9 United States***7.2
#94 China********1.6

Source: Akamai Technologies, Inc"

(b) Taiwan (4.4 Mbps) and Singapore (4.9 Mbps) are marginally better than China. Here is the raw data.

The State of the Internet Report; Americas highlights-third quarter, 2012. Akamai, Jan 23, 2013.
http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/q3_2012_soti_infographic.pdf

(c) Of course, Great Firewall is only part of the story. The report continues,

"The government also has failed to build infrastructure that would allow for quicker connections overseas, said David Wolf, a managing partner for the China practice of market consulting firm Allison+Partners. 'What they prefer is that Chinese users decide it is just too much trouble and by default use onshore sites, or sites that are mirrored onshore,' he says.

(d) There is no need to read the rest.