Shanghai to build uber broadband ... by 2010

Of all things we miss from back home, clean air and fast broadband come to mind the most often. Well, that’s about to change. In 2010, while we’d still be coughing our lungs out and spitting phlegm on sidewalks, we can at least take comfort in the fact that sound medical advice from WebMD, the CDC and assorted other sites will arrive on our computer screens -- if computers still have screens in 2010 -- at lightning fast speeds ... or will they?

According to TMCnet.com:

Shanghai, one of the fastest-developing cities in China, plans to increase the Internet access speed via broadband to 46Mbps by 2010, in order to greatly promote the online services around the themes of e-medical treatment, e-education, e-entertainment, and e-exhibition. The city will invest CNY 400 million (USD 1 = CNY 8.04) in the program.

But, before you get too excited, know this: The additional bandwidth applies to only domestic traffic. If browsing news on Sina, doing queries on Baidu or bashing a few orcs with your buddies on The9.com’s World of Warcraft is your bread and butter, then go ahead and cheer. On the other hand, if you like to read The Onion like us, outbound traffic to overseas sites will still be constrained by the trans-Pacific cable. (For more on this, look here.) Then, of course there’s the censorship thing: No pipe is fat enough to reach Voice of America or even Consumption Junction for that matter. That sucks!

Err … We feel some phlegm coming. Gotta go spit.