At the beginning of the 21st century, the four companies of "Giant China" are still equally famous.

After the government decided to promote ADSL broadband technology, Datang, ZTE, and Huawei immediately followed suit, and all of them used Texas Instruments' chipsets. Among them, Huawei has invested the most, and has even developed new access devices specifically for ADSL, which have been put into use in many cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

Shida Networks has launched ADSL broadband cats, and Lenovo and Great Wall have launched ADSL broadband PCI cards, all of which also use Texas Instruments' chips.

Great Wall's PCI card is the most popular, and most of today's broadband users are telecom broadband, followed by Great Wall broadband. Lenovo broadband has relatively few users, it may be that the operation is unfavorable, anyway, it was crushed by the Great Wall for some reason.

In addition to ADSL broadband, ISDN, which began to be developed in 1998, was once called broadband technology because it could reach a speed of 128K. Most Internet cafes in 2000 were connected to ISDN, which gave the impression that the speed was flying fast, because the telephone line dial-up Internet access was only a pitiful 56K.

In the first quarter of 2000, 1 million lines of ADSL were installed across the country, and nearly 100,000 lines are now in use – note that 100,000 lines, not 100,000 users.

Everyone knows that ADSL broadband is about to develop rapidly, and the direct impact of technological upgrades is that the existing outdated technologies will be greatly reduced.

In the second month of the launch of "Gods and Demons", 2911 (ISP service provider) suddenly announced "zero network fee surfing", dial-up Internet access only needs to pay 3.6 yuan per hour phone bill. In order to fight back against 2911, Jinling Telecom directly announced that "all Internet access fees are 1 yuan", that is, dial-up Internet access, and the network fee with telephone fee is only 1 yuan per hour. 163 and other service providers immediately followed up, and all of them greatly reduced the cost of Internet access.

At the same time as the telephone dial-up Internet fee has been sharply reduced, the ISDN Internet fee has also been greatly reduced, and the most ruthless directly shouted out the Internet café with a monthly cap of 600 yuan.

As a result, Internet cafes across the country have also dropped sharply, even on weekends and summer vacations, the hourly Internet fee has almost fallen below 4 yuan.

ADSL broadband is just emerging, but a large number of service providers are emerging. Nowadays, the initial installation fee of telecom broadband is more than 3,000 yuan, and the initial installation fee of Great Wall broadband is more than 2,000 yuan, and by next year, Telecom will be directly reduced to more than 1,000 yuan, and the Great Wall will simply jump off the building at a price of 500 yuan! Broadband is still expensive at present, and the price will be reduced wildly next year, and the monthly fee will be reduced to 60 yuan to 200 yuan.

The price war has undoubtedly promoted the popularization of the Internet in China, and also provided the soil for the development of online games.

In this summer, due to the big discount on ISDN Internet fees, more than 90% of Internet cafes have increased their network speed to 128K, which basically meets the needs of people to send emails, chat QQ and chat rooms.

However, there are still very few Internet cafes that install broadband, and the initial installation fee of two or three thousand does not matter, but the monthly Internet fee is a continuous investment. Internet café owners are guilty of not wearing broadband, because even with a speed of 128K, there is still no shortage of customers, and there are people queuing up to access the Internet anytime and anywhere.

……

Fei Xiaodong and his cousin are now night owls, because only in the middle of the night, the Internet speed of the Internet café can afford to drag down "Gods and Demons". Even in the morning, they only dare to cut monsters on remote maps, and as soon as they return to the city, they will get stuck, and there are too many players in the city!

Just after noon, my cousin drove a second-hand Poussin downstairs and shouted, "Xiaodong, get in the car and take you to a good place!"

Fei Xiaodong yawned and went downstairs and asked, "Where are you going?"

"An Internet café with broadband is very fast," my cousin said proudly, "I asked a lot of friends before I found out." ”

Fei Xiaodong said: "What exactly is broadband? At the Internet café we frequent, the network administrator has always said that we want to install broadband. ”

"Pretending to be a fart broadband, he is bragging, and the owner of the Internet café is very picky. The cousin said angrily.

The two took a car to a large Internet café and were about to pay for the Internet, but they were prompted to queue up slowly. It was only one o'clock in the afternoon, and more than 200 computers were already full, and there were several onlookers standing in front of each computer.

"Hack him to death, don't let him run away, the Taoist priest is going to fight a maze array!"

"Grab the boss, there's still a trace of blood left. ”

"Fuck, big bang, and a weapon I've never seen before!

"Grab a fart, I'm stuck. ”

"I'm stuck, too, what's going on?"

"It's all stuck, there are too many people, and the network speed can't be delayed!"

", didn't you say broadband? Broadband is stuck like that!"

"NMS, get out of here. Other companies pay 4 yuan an hour for the Internet, you need 5 yuan here, why is it still a card?"

“……”

There was shouting and screaming in the Internet café, Fei Xiaodong and his cousin looked at each other, and they were shocked by this scene.

Probably because of the broadband, players who are far away come here to play games. Two-thirds of the more than 200 computers in the entire Internet café were playing "War of Gods and Demons", and the collaborative atmosphere of shouting and shouting and killing made people feel extremely excited at this time.

Unfortunately, even if broadband is installed, there are too many people and the card will burst.

The boss seemed to happen to be here, and he suddenly shouted: "Don't worry, everyone, it's 512K broadband now, I can upgrade to 1M, but after upgrading, the Internet will cost 7 yuan an hour." You choose for yourself, do you want 5 yuan for 512K, or 7 yuan for 1M broadband?"

"7 yuan, hurry up and upgrade, don't talk nonsense!"

"I came to you specifically to play games, and the round-trip fare cost 2 yuan. ”

"Hurry up and upgrade the Internet speed, it's stuck!"

"Damn, don't play, this broken network speed or talk about QQ. ”

“……”

The owner of the Internet café called the service provider with a smile, and he was very willing to upgrade the Internet speed. Although there is no shortage of customers without broadband, with broadband, it can attract players from a radius of ten miles, even if the Internet is more expensive here, it will not deter these players, and the machines will always be full in the middle of the night and in the morning. Moreover, "War of Gods and Demons" also gives Internet cafes a 10% commission on point cards, which actually makes more money.

By the way, now there are two online games in China. "The King of Kings" only sells monthly cards, not point cards, 15 yuan per monthly card, and you have to buy character cards to build a trumpet.

The monthly card of "War of Gods and Demons" is 45 yuan, and the point card is 5 cents per hour, and the trumpet can be built casually.

In general, it is still "Gods and Demons" that is darker. But look at the cost of Internet access at this time, it is really not dark, the network fee is much more expensive than the cost of point cards, and operators, including telecommunications, are the big devils.

By the beginning of September, both games began to charge fees, and the number of registered players exceeded 500,000. Due to the poor network environment, the large team battles in both games are scrapped, and players pick places with fewer people, and the more people on the screen, they basically can't do anything.

You can definitely make money, but it's a dream to get rich with it.

Take "Gods and Demons War" as an example, in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, there are only a few Internet cafes in each city that have installed broadband. Only these Internet cafes can barely play, other Internet cafes can only fight wild monsters in the middle of the night, plus some home computer players, the number of people online at the same time can be 15,000 is the limit, 80% of the registered players are stuck in the pit.

Jinshan Company just wants to recover its costs and make a little more money by the way. However, there are also some expectations, hoping that broadband will soon be popularized, and the game will be detonated by that time.

Even if China's internet speed is not suitable for online games, and even if "Gods and Demons" and "King of Kings" do not make much money, they still attract countless Internet companies. It's been discovered that video games can still work like this, and it's an emerging market waiting to be developed.

As a result, "Cyber Three Kingdoms" was soon launched on the mainland, followed by "Dark Light" at the end of the year. By next year, games such as "Stone Age", "Millennium", "Dragon Family", and "Red Moon" were also introduced to China, and the Chinese online game market exploded all at once.

However, Song Weiyang is not afraid of competition at all, Xishanju is the only team in the mainland with experience in online game development at this time, and is slowly accumulating experience in the operation of online games. Taken together, these two experiences will lead to a massive explosion of broadband subscribers by 2002.

。 m.