1Gbps Broadband Service for Hong Kong

Limax Maximus writes "Hong Kong is planning to launch a 1Gbps broadband home service. Although the idea of using shared infrastructure is nothing new for TV/phone/data this appears to be the first to do this over IP at such high speed. The cost is high - 215 USD a month. Per megabit, however, this is a very cheap service. This kind of solution only really works in town blocks where cat5 cabling is a realistic option."

Ok, since people insist America isn't "behind"

Please let me know where I can get this gigabit service in the US, so I can buy a few lines and open a data center.

Re:Ok, since people insist America isn't "behind"

Ofcourse ,You need to stop complaining now as the people of Peru are far worse off than you and they shouldnt complain as the people of Papua new guinea are worse off than them and.... so the beat goes on

Re:Ok, since people insist America isn't "behind"

"The whole reason we're "Behind" is because we have to update old technology, whereas most of the Aisan countries weren't as technologically advanced as we were until recently. Then they could go on making new technology, whereas we have to spend money to replace older stuff."

I don't "get it". How does "not having anything in the first place" make it cheaper and easier? I'd guess that there would be no difference either way, and it might be a little easier to upgrade in the US if you have cable conduits all over the cities and wiring in the house for it.

Re:Ok, since people insist America isn't "behind"

The only parts of America that are behind are the areas with monopolistic corporations that have no motivation to offer a more powerful service. In East Wenatchee, WA, the Douglas County Public Utilities District has laid fiber to the demarc( yes, to each and single house) and is offering 100 mbps symmetrical fiber internet service for $39.95/month. http://www.localtelonline.com/dbf.htm The PUD can get away with trampling all over inferior competing providers without getting sued by Charter and Verizon because the city isn't large enough to fight over.

Can neighbors share/resell.

This is a great & affordable plan for even the non-wealthy if communiies can share it

Re:Can neighbors share/resell.

Well it will be as soon as someone installs a WiFi AP without changing the default settings. ;-)

shouldnt it be

. This kind of solution only really works in town blocks where cat5 cabling is a realistic option."

Shouldnt that be Cat6 cabling

Re:shouldnt it be

Actually you can run 1 Gb/s over Cat5e cabling. Cat6 is just better suited for it

HKBN BB100

They are also offering BB100, a 100Mbps service, that is similar to the price of regular ADSL in Hong Kong.

More information here: http://bb100.hkbn.net/BB100/index_e.htm [hkbn.net]

what for ...?

really: what the use of such a broad band from a normal user???

Re:what for ...?

Oh come on... This is /., we all know that stack of Playboys under your bed is just an offline backup in case your internet connection fails.

Firewall of China?

I am assuming that Hong Kong is subject to the same 'Net censorship that the rest of mainland China is? Or is this true?

Re:Firewall of China?

Hong-kong has been kept in a sort of Capitalist sand-box in many ways , so it does not suffer the same restrictions as the rest of china. iirc

A communist sandbox?

"Hong-kong has been kept in a sort of Capitalist sand-box in many ways "

Is that the opposite of a Communist Sandbox? Remember the old joke: "What do you get if you bring communism to the Sahara Desert? Well, at first, nothing. Then, after 10 years, you get a shortage of sand."

Re:Firewall of China?

No, our net access is not regulated or monitored by China. China has to maintain some distance from us until 2047, and any action that reeks of Beijing's hand would be met with massive resistance in HK.

Hong Kongers love their market economy and freedoms, often citing it as an example of why HK is a better place to live and work than other rivals in the region like Singapore and Shanghai.

Re:Firewall of China?

It is trying to narrow that gap, surely.

However, by law it can't meddle all that much with Hong Kong's affairs, at least not without violating their agreement with the British and pissing off Hong Kong's 7 million people (and many in China who view Hong Kong as a democratic beacon of hope).

After a massive protest in HK, China decided to lay off enforcing Article 23, which dealt with subversion. It also lead, indirectly, to the Chief Executive (our leader) getting sacked. The debate now is when (not if) Hong Kong will be able to elect its own leaders.

There's a large voice of dissent in Washington against China, especially with their yuan policy. I suppose that may be the reason the US sees things over here in a very negative light.

Re:Firewall of China?

That's not so much China-imposed censorship than censorship by Hong Kongers who are pro-China. It's not so much about politics as it is about business.

Many in the media feel if they report against China's wishes, they will be left out. It's not all too different from what many in the US media feel about the White House.

In any case, the two leading English-language newspapers are, AFAIK, not censored.

Re:Firewall of China?

Off topic -- but what about the heavy newspaper censorship imposed by China in HK then?

There isn't any "imposed", but much of the media is owned by moguls who suck up to Beijing to further their business interests. But notably critical of China is Jimmy Lai's Next and Apple Daily, (along with showbiz gossip). In HK we still have a local relay of the BBC World Service on AM radio, unchanged from before the handover.

Re:Firewall of China?

cHina is not monitoring mE. if you think that, you reaLly need to see a Psychiatrist imMEdiately.

Faster, but for what?

While per megabyte/second it seems very cheap, you have to consider what your internet usage actually is. If you're only using the internet for an hour or two a day (and who among us doesn't?), then this faster speed internet is a lot more expensive than normal slower service. You're paying more, but not using more. That's not a better value, that's getting ripped off.

Even if you had this faster pipe, what would you do with it? Download more porn? Upload more MP3s?

I see the benefit for a fatter pipe for businesses who need to serve up large amounts of data, but for the average user, faster does very little. It's nothing like the jump from dialup to broadband. We are as fast as we need to be. Page downloads are already instantaneous, how can you seriously improve over instantaneous.

Re:Faster, but for what?

Yeah - that's the trick! Almost nobody will use full 1 Gbps capacity BUT it sounds cool to have it :-)

Nice... but

what can you actually do with it apart from share files between neighbours/towns? I can't imagine most normal websites being able to keep up with a 1Gbps connection, and surely the PC rendering webpages/other content becomes the bottleneck?

I do suppose the question really is: what's the speed of the backbone between Hong Kong and the rest of the world, and what's the contention going to be like once people start taking this up?

P2P

With peer-to-peer, the more popular a download is, the faster it can be downloaded. The limit is the speed of the internet connections of those trading file pieces. There is no central bottleneck. With a few high speed connections uploading, everyone's downloads will be faster.

Why is this so cheap?

1 gbps is more bandwidth than an OC-48, which run for about 700,000 US dollars/month. I understand that consumers will only use a tiny fraction of their allocated bandwidth, and they don't demand the level of stability that an enterprise line needs. Still, you've got to figure that the ISP need to dedicate at least 50mbps of bandwidth to each customer (approx a DS3), and that would still be about $15,000 a month.

Re:Why is this so cheap?

Not so.

Read the fine print. Overseas bandwidth is capped at 20mbits. [ctinets.com] (sorry for chinese language) It's only local traffic that will run at 1Gps, and that costs them nothing as they own all the fibre.

This already exists in Sweden.

In sweden www.bredband2.se offers 1 Gbit connections for 118,60 USD. This is without limits.

For more information and so forth (in swedish) see www.labs2.se

Conquer Taiwan

If China wants to add Taiwan to its territory, why not entice them with offers of free or cheap broadband? This is sure to win more hearts than the current line which is "We'll bomb you to bits and kill you all if you acknowledge the obvious fact that you've been an independent country for 50 years."

Re:Conquer Taiwan

"Why doesn't China entice Taiwanese with special offers? Because the Taiwanese block spam from China too."

Which leaves those Taiwanese to shake their heads in envy as they look across the Straights of Formosa to China, where they see the men standing on the shore taunting them by waving their prodigious giant penises and making 1/2 km jumps with their super HGH-herb-enhanced powers. They say to themselves "See? If we could get Chinese spam, we'd be just like that!"

Cat5? I don'think so.

If I'm going to be running network cable all over a building, I want something that'll last a bit longer than twisted pair copper. If the users want to drop back down to copper on their end then fine but I don't fancy having to re-cable every 5-10 years just to keep up.

Where to buy cat 5e?

For only another $15 a month you could pick up a new computer from Sham Shui Po, they have AMD Semprons 2200's and Intel Celeron 1.8 Ghz computers for $1800. But you'll be lucky to find good quality cat 5, before searching for cat 5e or cat 6.

Hopefully with this bandwidth they will be able to launch HDTV service, its quite sad seeing all the big plasma and LCD TV's in stores like Fortress and broadway but only a regular TV signal.

Meanwhile, In Japan

In Japan, you can get 100mps fiber for about $55 a month. That's not nearly as fast, but it's quick enought for anything you might need and lots cheaper.

Still too expensive?, try 40 mps ADSL for about $20 a month...

Thanks to piracy

Now just everyone pause and think. What would people do with these 1gbit streams if there was no (illegal) downloadable content?

Sure legal content (without DRM) is also an option but since one is not available right now, we have to rely on piracy to increase the demand for bandwidth.

Re:Thanks to piracy

In HK if we want pirated DVDs or software, we can buy it for about 50c/disk. Less hassle than downloading mostly. Though I suppose BitTorrent will pick up when people want to see the new episodes of Survivor or whatever. (Even though the overseas bandwidth is capped, local P2P will go much faster once there's a local seed or two.)

But the commercial motivation is probably video on demand, and video phones.

*cries*

and here i am, in the UK, stuck on 512k atm, with 2mb being the fastest affordable choice i can see :(.
1 gigabit tho. Thats an obscene amount of bandwith - not even bittorrent could consume that much.... surely

CAT5e, not CAT5

This kind of solution only really works in town blocks where cat5 cabling is a realistic option.

While technically it's often possible to do gigabit ethernet with CAT5, the article actually mentions that the cable drops are CAT5e.

RIAA

Would the **AA allow such a thing in the USA? jes, they DO control tech to a certin extent - and it is my belefe that they and others like them are the reason home users cant get any real upload streams here, 128 or 256 if you are lucky is the tops here...and running _any_ server is a no-no - hummmm...I wonder why?

This is OLD news ...

http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=5343 1GB private broadband service launched in Sweden 12/01/2005 by Rémi Gamba The Swedish region of Skåne now has the world`s fastest private internet service. Users in Skåne can now receive a 1GB wideband connection for 95 per month, from internet service provider Labs2. The service employs a combination of optical fibres and Ethernet. Labs2 claims to be the first in the world to bring a Gigabit connection to private users. In addition to the monthly fee, users also have to pay an installation charge of 166 and a sign up to a binding subscription of six months. Labs2 is offering the new fast connection through its subsidiary, Bredband2.

Servers

Yes, that is all great and well, but do they allow you to run servers on these lines?

Japan = same speed and alot cheeper.

Isn't Softbank Corp. and Yahoo Japan offering a gigabit per second for ¥4,200 ? This is about $40

Shut up.

I pay $84/month for 128k here in Ecuador. I don't even want to hear this! /me rips out hair

Going to college in HK...

I'm moving to Hong Kong to study:

1) Software, music, and game piracy
2) The human female anatomy
3) Human sexual intercourse

How far does real 1Gbps extend?

Obviously, they are not going to get full Internet access at anywhere near 1Gbps rates. The ISP's access to the Internet is most likely below 1Gbps.

But, in dense metropolitan areas (Hong Kong is a best case scenario for this) there are interesting possibilities for file sharing and other community services. File shares among friends and family become as good as local disk.

If your 1Gbps zone is the street you live on, it's of more limited usefulness. But, if it's the whole city, this would kick butt.

Streaming HD Video

High Definition Video is a max of 19.8 Mbits/s. If you had a good enough storage system you could stream 50 high definition videos at the same time with a symmetric 1Gb/s connection.

The terms cap the bandwidth to foreign countries which could have strange effects on the spread of culture as the mainstream media loses its grip on the production of video content. Maybe the best role for government in the bandwidth business would be the subsidization of ISP upstream bandwidth costs to foreign countries, it'd be good for trade defecits. Maybe the popularity of American culture in the rest of the world has as much to do with its availibility (satellite tv) as aestheitics.

16 bps

Am I the only one who thought at first that it said "16bps Broadband Service...?"

1 Gig service in Japan over coax cable alreay done

I am too lazy to look up a link, but news of 1 Gigbit service through coax cable (ie cable modem) service is already being rolled out somewhere in Tokyo or Yokohama, Japan. Cisco Systems is the network hardware vendor.

The author of the article must have been stiffing something when he said that 1 Gb serivce only works in areas that have Cat5 cable between buildings - how about Cat5e or Cat6. Fiber?? (FiOS), Cable?? MetroEthernet??

Yes, the USA has fallen behind and getting more so. We just have a capitalist system and a government that does not push the issue and make it happen. Also, we are a pretty big country so comparisons between us and South Korea are not much of an apples to apples comparison. A better comparison might be France who was far behind the US and in only 2 years left us in the dust.

Just my 2 cents.

There are already a bunch of posts, so this one will probably nerver be read......

Have a good one!

-Andy

Re:fast BB

Where did you get 100mbit broadband? University network? I didn't think it was commercially available.