Mannerisms

None of the texts or photos I tried to send from San Francisco worked. For 24 hours they were 'queued'.

On arrival at Beijing airport I turn on my phone and, whizz bang wallop, the whole lot get sent.

I then make a few calls in the city and overseas, and the sound quality is clear as a bell, there's no static or background noise, the calls don't drop and the noise level doesn't vary. How nice to leave behind all those characteristics of the wireless service in Monterey.

Another nice thing is that, as soon as you get off the plane, a couple of charming girls offer you a China Mobile SIM card for 230 yuan ($40). The evil spectre of roaming charges is immediately dispelled.

How I laugh when I get the message from my operator: 'Welcome to China calls cost GBP1.20 to make and 60p to receive.' Not for me, mate.

Then, gloriously, the hotel offers free broadband, and Skype does the rest. I make a 25 minute call home for around 20p. Again, no static, no dropped call, no variable sound quality, clear solid speech.

One day the wireless operators will realize that you can't charge extortionately for services when there are cheap, or free alternatives.

When they wake up one morning to find they have no subscribers, they'll have only themselves to blame.