The "traffic trap" with many traffic concessions and fast consumption is frequently vomited by netizens.
"Free use of national traffic" and "unlimited and more carefree" … … A few days ago, major telecom operators have launched "unlimited traffic" packages to meet the growing demand of users for traffic in the era of mobile Internet. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the Statistical Bulletin of Communication Industry in 2017, showing that in 2017, the mobile Internet traffic reached 23.5 billion GB, an increase of 179% over last year.
In May, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission issued the "Implementation Opinions on Further Promoting the 2018 Special Action of Speeding up and Reducing Network Fees and Accelerating the Cultivation of New Kinetic Energy for Economic Development", proposing to cancel the "roaming" fee for mobile traffic from July 1 this year and encourage basic telecommunications enterprises to launch traffic reduction measures such as large-traffic packages. The average unit price of mobile traffic decreased by more than 30% during the year.
The pace of "speeding up and reducing fees" is getting faster and faster. Do users really enjoy the dividends it brings? The reporter launched an investigation.
Restrictive clauses, the logo needs to be more eye-catching
Recently, some users complained on the Internet that they bought unlimited traffic packages for 4G networks. After using them beyond a certain amount of traffic every month, the internet speed will slow down, it will take several seconds to open the webpage, and even it is difficult to log in to WeChat. I called the operator’s customer service, but I was told that if I want to return to the 4G network speed, I need to purchase an additional traffic acceleration package.
According to relevant telecom experts, the reason why users’ traffic is limited after reaching a certain upper limit is because the infrastructure construction of operators has not reached the reality of opening unlimited traffic for everyone. Operators can only guarantee the experience of most users by limiting the network speed.
Users don’t buy the expert’s explanation. In their view, the literal meaning of "unlimited traffic" is "unlimited use of traffic", and operators have added preconditions such as "speed limit" without prompting, which is actually a deception to consumers.
According to industry insiders, in order to develop the number of new users, operators do have negative information about the existence of speed limit clauses in unlimited traffic packages. The reporters opened the official website of several operators respectively, and found that the advertisements of unlimited traffic packages were placed in the most conspicuous position on the home page, but after reaching a certain traffic, the words of speed limit were hidden in the corner of the poster, which was not eye-catching. When calling the customer service phone to handle the package, the customer service staff did not take the initiative to remind the reporter that there was a "speed limit" clause in the contract.
A few days ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology explicitly asked operators to standardize publicity: "We should attach great importance to the current ‘ Unlimited ’ For the problems existing in the package promotion, the whole industry immediately carried out self-inspection work, effectively standardized the promotion and promotion behavior of such packages, and must not exaggerate the publicity, and the restrictions should be marked eye-catching. "
There are still many users who vomit, and there are similar routines in the targeted traffic packages launched by operators. For example, a video website cooperates with an operator to launch a targeted traffic package. In the advertisement, it is claimed that users will not generate any traffic charges when using the video APP. However, if you read the terms of the package contract carefully, what is free is only the traffic generated by watching the video, but it does not include the traffic generated during the loading of pictures, texts, barrage and third-party advertisements in the APP. Without any hint, the user’s traffic fee may rise instead of falling.
Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, believes that even if the operator has a clause in the contract for handling unlimited traffic, if it is not prompted when the user handles it, or the clause is not specially marked in the contract, it also violates the consumer’s right to know.
Fast traffic consumption, preventing mobile phones from being infected with viruses.
In May of this year, a Shanghai netizen posted that his mobile phone ran hundreds of megabytes of traffic from 2 am to 4 am, and his mobile phone has been connected to the WiFi; at home; Even if the WiFi at home was disconnected, he didn’t do anything to the mobile phone. After complaining to the operator, the customer service staff returned some of his traffic, but said that the responsibility should be attributed to the user’s mobile phone application.
"Once a G’s traffic was enough for one month, but now it is not enough for 15 days." "The traffic consumption is too fast. The first thing to do when you go to a place is to see if there is WiFi." Many users question the "abnormal consumption" of mobile phone traffic and think that operators "play tricks" in traffic calculation.
Will operators really "steal" user traffic? Zhejiang Quality Supervision Bureau and Zhejiang Institute of Metrology have done a communication traffic detection experiment. In three multi-standard wireless communication Internet traffic monitors, the SIM cards of three major operators are randomly inserted to download the same file. From the comparison of the test results, there is almost no difference with the traffic statistics provided by the operators. Thus, it is unlikely that the operators will "steal traffic".
Zhu Wei said: "The main reason why users feel that traffic runs fast is that smart phone applications often choose to automatically connect to the network in the background in order to remind users to update and push all kinds of messages in time, and the traffic will be consumed quietly. In addition, Trojan virus is also one of the culprits that lead to traffic stealing. " According to reports, a team of technical experts once found a Trojan virus planted in a mobile phone application. As long as the user installed the mobile phone application with the virus, even the simple operation of sliding to unlock the screen would consume a certain amount of traffic.
Zhu Wei suggested that in order to gain the trust of users, operators should disclose the network communication protocols that have passed the audit of the regulatory authorities to users. At the same time, users should not download apps at will through illegal channels to avoid being infected with mobile phone viruses that consume traffic.

































