THE Lowly Peon

3G vs Wifi in China 
11 June 2010, 10:45am

So now I have two devices that can access the Internet over 3G (my cellular data connection): my iPhone 3GS and my iPad. I've spent the last few days using it a lot, and I've found something interesting.

I may be wrong, but it seems that bend the freest firewall of China, 3G is much faster than wifi, even for accessing the same sites at the same time of day. In fact, I can stream YouTube using a VPN over 3G without pauses, but over wifi I need to wait forever for it to buffer. That's incredible.

I'm not sure what the reason is; I assume it's because China filters 3G networks using different machines, and the internet connections' filters are badly overworked.

I've been meaning to get actual test results to compare, but for now I'll just say that I may end up spending a wee bit more money to use 3G because it's fast, anywhere, and more consistent than wifi.