Xinhua said China Mobile will block SMS coming from the seven advertising companies and will work with all the operators to sort out rules on SMS advertising.

200 million messages – how did they manage it? The paper says that there isn’t much punishment for companies sending out junk SMS. That said, you would have thought the cost of sending out 200 million texts would be prohibitive enough.

Xinhua also adds that China Unicom will also provide English, Korean and Japanese hotline services during the games and extend opening hours for its outlets around the Olympic venues. It looks like the most interesting race won’t be on the athletics track this Olympics: it’s all about the networks. China Mobile, which is also working on Olympics content has promised to get its 3G network up in time for the Games while Unicom is reportedly spending billions of yuan on improving its GSM network. I wonder which will go down better with visitors – slow and steady or fast and just-released?