The Chinese New Year is coming soon, and many people will take advantage of the 8-day Spring Festival holiday to return to their hometown for reunion. In order to help everyone celebrate the New Year more happily, around the theme of the Spring Festival, Lei Technology has made a special topic, and has produced a number of Spring Festival + technology-related content, such as how to choose a mobile phone during the Spring Festival, family game recommendations, how to choose TV, etc.
However, Xiao Lei suddenly realized a problem that many people didn't pay attention to - the Internet. In the era of mobile Internet, the Internet is like air and water for us, which is completely a necessity for life and work.
But it's easy to overlook that in many people's hometowns, especially in relatively remote places with few young people, the network conditions are really not so good. For example, in Xiaolei's hometown, many elders do not have broadband installed, and the mobile network coverage in many villages is not very comprehensive, and some people will not be able to use their mobile phones to their heart's content because of the high traffic cost.
So,Now Xiaolei (ID: leitech) has given a set of relatively low-cost solutions to the network problem of returning home during the Chinese New Year.
Needless to say, for most people, wired broadband is the most cost-effective, most stable, and smoothest network service. In recent years, the popularity of wired broadband, especially high-speed broadband, has been very high, and even the remote villages in Xiaolei's hometown have benefited from the "village to village" policy to achieve broadband network coverage.
However, many people are reluctant to apply for broadband in their hometown, often because they feel that they have to spend an extra amount of money out of thin air, and they may not stay in their hometown for a long time, so it is not cost-effective to run broadband. In fact, there are some low-cost solutions for broadband now.
First of all, some operators will provide many preferential policies in order to expand broadband services. In recent years, many people in Xiaolei's hometown have installed China Mobile's free broadband, as long as they have a mobile phone number, they can handle it, and they can pay an installation fee.
Xiaolei also found that in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi and other provinces and cities, China Unicom has launched a low-consumption broadband activity, as long as the monthly consumption of mobile phones remains forty or fifty yuan, you can get one or two years or even long-term broadband services. Taking Fujian Province as an example, if you promise a low monthly consumption of more than 50 yuan, you can get a 1000M broadband, and you only need to pay the installation fee and optical modem fee. If you don't have a mobile phone card in your hometown, but you want to install broadband for your elders, you can also consider using your own number to apply for remote broadband, which also has discounts.
Source: China Unicom APP).
Second, although many people in rural areas do not have broadband, they will install radio and television cable TV services in order to watch TV. And now radio and television in many regions are promoting broadband services, basically half buy and half give, although the network quality can not be compared with the three major operators, but brush short**, there is basically no problem with watching TV.
In addition, some operators will also promote short-term network services similar to broadband during summer and winter vacations, and if you only use the Internet during the Chinese New Year, you can consider this kind of solution. At the same time, telecom and other operators have also engaged in activities such as "sub-broadband", and users can apply for an additional free broadband, but such activities often require that they can only be handled in the same city, which is more suitable for people who work in their hometowns.
Source: Telecom).
After getting broadband, the second problem to be solved is networking. Xiaolei found that although many relatives and elders may not understand the technical principles of wifi and mobile networks, they have their own simple and crude way to distinguish between them: whether to pay for data or not. But wifi networking is a headache for many people, after all, self-built houses in rural areas are often not like rental houses in cities, and a router can do it.
According to Xiaolei's own experience, for multi-floor or large-area houses, the mode of multi-router networking is preferred, no matter how high-end and expensive the router, it is basically impossible to get the signal coverage of the whole house with only one.
Fortunately, routers are very cheap now, and mesh networking technology has long been popularized. If the requirements are not particularly high, you basically only need to buy a few two or three hundred routers, and brands such as Xiaomi, TP Link, ZTE, and JD Cloud have many products to choose from.
Source: Xiaomi).
In terms of specific mesh networking methods, Xiaolei suggests giving priority to wired, which has much higher stability. Of course, wireless mesh is also acceptable, after all, there is no need to pull the network cable, which is much more convenient. For example, at least one router is placed on one floor, and one sub-router is placed in a room far away from the main router.
Source: Xiaomi).
Regarding the network problem of the Spring Festival, Xiao Lei once encountered an embarrassing situation. Once I went to an elder's house to pay New Year's greetings, his home did not have broadband, and Xiaolei could only use a mobile phone card to access the Internet, but there was no base station in that village, and the mobile phone was in a state of no service, and it was disconnected from the Internet world all day. Another relative who went with him used a mobile phone card and had a 4G signal, but because he watched a TV series, the traffic fee was quickly overspent.
In the face of this temporary network demand, it is naturally impossible to install broadband and buy routers, and you have to start around the mobile phone card.
Let's talk about the cost of traffic first, to be honest, like Xiaolei's daily two-point and one-line commuting mode, the demand for traffic is not high, after all, there are wifi at home and in the company, almost 10GB of traffic is enough for a month, and the traffic in the mobile phone card can meet the demand.
However, in the face of temporary large-traffic demand, it is necessary to find other solutions. Generally speaking, the larger the traffic package, the lower the unit price of the traffic, the shorter the validity period, and the cheaper the traffic, so the Spring Festival is a very temporary traffic demand, and you can buy a seven-day, three-day, or even one-day large traffic package.
Source: China Unicom APP).
Of course, you can also consider getting a high-traffic card with a relatively cheap monthly rent, and the three major operators have similar number card products. Take Xiaolei's own Guangdong traffic king** as an example, it was launched by Unicom, and more than 100GB of traffic can be obtained for 30 yuan per month, which is enough in most cases. China Mobile also has Chunhui card, Ruitu card and other low-month-rent high-traffic cards, and China Telecom has Yiniu card, Yizhou card and other similar number cards**. Their common feature is that the traffic is relatively cheap, and the disadvantage is that there may be a preferential time limit, there are restrictions on the attribution, etc., which are not suitable for long-term use as the main card, but it is still very cost-effective as a card placed in the second card slot.
Source: Telecom).
As for the traffic needs of the elders, Xiaolei feels that in addition to handling special traffic cards, he can also handle supplementary cards for them through home networking and other forms, and share the resources in the main card, which can also dilute the cost of mobile phone communication.
In addition, you may need to check the local signal coverage in advance before visiting relatives and friends during the Chinese New Year. To be honest, Xiaolei himself is accustomed to the state of 5G signal everywhere, and he can access the Internet at high speed when he takes out his mobile phone at any time, but it is obviously unrealistic to want every place to achieve the same level of coverage as in big cities. Moreover, the number of base stations in different regions will be significantly different from different operators. If you have a few more SIM cards from different carriers, the possibility of "losing contact" will be much reduced.
Although with the development of society and the improvement of material level, many people say that "the taste of the year is light", but for the majority of Chinese, the Spring Festival is still the most important festival and has unusual significance.
The changes in our Spring Festival life are driven by scientific and technological progress. The development of the mobile Internet can make it more convenient for us to send red envelopes and New Year's greetings; The large screen and intelligence of TV can make us better the Spring Festival program; The advent of video games has provided us with a richer and more diverse entertainment program for the Chinese New Year. And what runs through it and serves as the basic support is the network service that we have long been accustomed to.
For young people like Xiaolei, who live in the city all year round, except for returning to their hometowns for the Chinese New Year, they rarely face a lack of network facilities. Of course, whether it is wired broadband or mobile network in China, the breadth of coverage is far ahead in the world. Even if you may occasionally encounter a lack of network service once or twice in the process of returning home for the Chinese New Year, I believe that most of the problems can be solved through the methods we provide above.
Finally, I wish you all a happy new year and a smooth connection. The Year of Science and Technology in China