State Monopolized Booking Website Collapses as Holidays Approach

Follow us on TWITTER: twitter.com Like us on FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com On January 9th, the Chinese official train booking website, 12306.cn, collapsed with over 1.4 billion clicks. This website was developed and maintained by a subsidiary of the Ministry of Railways. Its server could not support the high volume traffic and experienced multiple failures. Some passengers were charged for failed bookings. The website has become the target of complaints. People believe the state monopolized booking authority suffers from lack of free market competition and lack of professionalism. In China, going home for the Chinese New Year has become one the biggest challenges of the year. This year, train ticketing went online for the first time. On the 9th, the ticket site 12306.cn had 1.4 billion visits, a drastic increase from the average of 1 billion per day. High volume traffic caused a temporary crash. A netizen said that the railway online booking site was useless. "I felt hopeless when I found out there's no tickets for the 20th and 21st, even standing tickets are not available in some cars. Finally I was able to register online, and then it asked to activate an ID. After that, I could not go any further." A micro blog post stated "Can't go into the online booking at all. Finally got in once, but there's no tickets." A person angrily complained after trying to book a ticket online, "What online booking? I have been waiting since 6am until 11pm and trying to buy a ticket from ...

View Count: 3 Date: January 12, 2012