The story sparked widespread ridicule on the Chinese internet (Representational)
Beijing:
A man in China has been sentenced to seven years in prison for setting fire to internet equipment after becoming enraged over a slow connection, authorities said.
The man, nicknamed Lan, was at an internet cafe in southern Guangxi province last June when his frustration over the connection speed spilled over.
He responded by destroying a public box containing fiber optic network cables, a local court said in a statement Monday.
The court said the man “used a lighter to set fire to a napkin he was carrying, then set fire to a telecommunications box at a traffic intersection”.
The fire left nearly 4,000 homes and offices, including a public hospital, without internet for 28 to 50 hours.
“After the incident, public security officials seized Lan’s instrument of crime – a lighter,” the court in Cenxi, a small mountain town, said.
Lan was later hit with a seven-year prison sentence for “destroying public telecommunications facilities”.
The story sparked widespread ridicule on the Chinese internet, with one Weibo user calling the man a “big baby.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
