I spent a year using China Mobile broadband at home—more precisely, a joint setup between the radio and television provider and China Mobile. Mobile was using the cable operator’s lines, with the signal delivered through an HD set-top box. It was still in the promotion phase, and the price was cheap. I went for the low cost without thinking too much about it, and that turned out to be a mistake.
After a year of dealing with one frustration after another, I caught a Telecom promotion and switched over as fast as I could. At the same time, China Telecom was also running a deal on IPTV, so I decided to replace the old cable TV service too.
Because I signed up for a discounted package, Telecom told me I would need to sort out the modem and set-top box myself. Before buying anything, I specifically called the property management office to ask whether the building had fiber-to-the-home or copper telephone lines. They told me it was fiber. So I went online and bought an optical modem for 220 yuan, almost 100 yuan cheaper than the one sold officially by Telecom.
Then the installer arrived.
As soon as he saw the device I had bought, he immediately said it wouldn’t work. According to him, this building wasn’t on fiber at all—it still used ordinary phone lines. I was completely confused. I told him the property office had said the neighborhood had fiber. He explained that the entire residential complex did, except for this one building. So the optical modem was useless here; a regular modem was all I needed.
Luckily, I still had an old modem at home, and once we plugged it in, the internet worked.
But that wasn’t the end of it. The installer then told me that if I wanted to use IPTV, I would need to buy another modem. I asked why one wasn’t enough. He said IPTV had to run on a dedicated line.
Fortunately, ordinary modems are cheap now. On JD, they were only a little over 50 yuan, so that problem was solved quickly.
That whole modem fiasco taught me something: after an experience like that, I had no desire to save money by buying a set-top box online too. It seemed like the perfect way to waste time and create even more trouble if I bought the wrong one again. So I decided to go directly to a Telecom service office and buy the IPTV box there.
I checked the address on the map and headed out with Jasmine to get it. After wandering in circles for an hour, I still couldn’t find the branch.
So I gave up on that one, found another address, took an afternoon nap, and then went back out with Jasmine again.
After getting off the bus, I discovered the road in front of the place marked on the map was under construction, so we had to make a huge detour. By the time I finally reached the Telecom office, the front shutter was already halfway down. I bent over and slipped inside anyway. A few people in there were chatting and all looked at me in surprise. I said I was there to take care of some business.
They told me they were already closed and that I should come back the next day.
I had spent an entire day and still failed to bring home a set-top box. I was so annoyed that I almost didn’t want to bother with the whole thing anymore.
At that point Jasmine tried to cheer me up. She said we should go to the supermarket instead and buy a lot of good food. That immediately sounded much better, so off we went.
At the supermarket, Jasmine bought all kinds of things—fruit, and even Orleans-style roast chicken, which I really like. Just as we were walking out, the installer called and told me I didn’t need to buy the set-top box after all. They could rent one to me.
That was a genuine surprise, the kind that makes a bad day suddenly feel worthwhile. After all that running around, it turned out I didn’t have to pay for one myself.
So in the end, I finally got China Telecom IPTV up and running at home, and I was done with the old cable setup.