Hong Kong's High-Tech Technology Incubator

Austin Huggins writes "The BBC is reporting on a new hi-tech complex built in Hong Kong to attract tech businesses. 'It has taken four years to build and comes complete with a hi-tech hotel, apartments, shops and services.' And they have a 100 mbs network to boot." As the article points out, Hong Kong has a suddenly harder time keeping ahead of booming cities in mainland China.

Re:Wow

[isny]

Is that millibits? Man, and I thought 300bps was slow.

basically....

[ikea5]

It's just a fancy name for whole bunch of office buildings wired togther with gigabit ethernet.

100 Mbit/s connection

[Searinox]

That's as much as a normal server in a datacenter has o.O

Re:basically....

[JPriest]

"Our network is running at 100 megabits a second, which is 10 times faster than normal broadband connections" And also 10 times slower than GigE. It took them 4 years to build it, GigE equipment was expensive back then.

What the hell is wrong with BBC/Slashdot?

[fussili]

Cyberport is a MASSIVE waste of government money and worse still was just a large luxury building contract HANDED OVER to everyone's favourite Hong Kong cartel.

Anyone from Hong Kong reading this report is currently laughing their ass off at the idea that this is somehow indicative of Hong Kong 'racing ahead'. Cyberport was nothing more or less than a gigantic gift to Li Ka Shing's estate (via his son the ever popular Richard Li).

I bet you guys think our partially state-owned Disney land is a good idea too. Seriously, if you like this stuff you can have Chief Executive Tung Che Hwa. Please, take him!

Until the local population...

[Lead Butthead]

Until the local population develops respect for intellectual property, I don't expect much to happen...

Re:Why Hong Kong

[twitter]

Why go there just for the bandwidth, when they can locate their factory in mainland China and enjoy the benefits of genuine slave labor.

I can get the benefits of genuine slave labor at Walmart.

Is it a surprise that Hong Kong would have trouble "keeping up" with anyone in China? The one thing you can count on with a Communist government is that "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine." Any factory run by any party boss is going to have everything anyone in Hong Kong has and resources no one in Hong Kong can touch. That more people are getting a taste of the fruits of their labors in China in no way makes them free or the government any less corrupt.

Hong Kong, under the UK, was a showcase of unregulated capitalism. That's amazing, when you consider the nasty way the UK taxes it's own citizens to death and beyond. It's demise under the Chinese is as inevitable as it's wealth and prowess was under the UK.

Re:Not supprised

[selderrr]

okay, i'm going to say something incredibly naive now :

so what ?

It's not like the US (or EU, where I live) somehow becomes a minority population all of a sudden ! We will become a less influent factor in the world economics. Probably behind Asia, but in front of South America or Africa. We will stop being cutting edge on quite a few domains. But it is not like as if somehow we'll have to live on water and bread. Maybe, just maybe, the asian uprising is a small step towards global leveling of powers (okay, that was really naive. Forget I just said that). People should stop thinking that the asians are taking away our lives. They are just taking away some of the luxuries that we didn't have an exclusive on anyway. Get over it. Grow up. Be happy, not jaleous

Tech ? HK?

[hermank]

what ? it tooks $2b to just build a complex with 100 mb network? and it is call as 'cyberport'? and some of you just called it advanced? hope of the future of HK?

Here is a list of reason that it is doomed fail
. HKSAR Chief Mr Tung,
. A group of Chief under Tung, who is racing to be next HKSAR Chief madnessly.
. A Govt controlled by groups of short sighted property development companies, with only money in their head.

If you add property market, with 'high speed network' and 'short sighted visioners' together, what would you come up? .. a giant video game center?

Network infrastructure is just one tiny block of modern technological advances. It takes at lease the urge to pursuit knowledge, patience, respect to research and development, to the person who are in the way to push the technologies forward.

All these can be easily found in various universities in US, EU... but not in HK. Why? the Govt just slashed the education budget and made radical changes in educational system that only the Chief of Education knows what is going on.

Remember the success of Sillicon Valley? Was it a 'cyberport' before the Nobel scientist arrived?

Korea is now getting strong in technology field. Anyone remember the days in economic crisis. The govt had cash for only 100 days operation. What turned Korea history? 'cyberport' ?

With a government like that, even there were a 100000Mbps network, the tech in HK will just go flat.

Re:Why Hong Kong

[node 3]

Hong Kong, under the UK, was a showcase of unregulated capitalism.

The company town is a showcase of "unregulated capitalism" as well.

"Unregulated capitalism" has no minimum wage, no safety codes, no labeling requirements.

You think a 40 hour work week is bad? That's the best the socialists could get from the capitalists at the time, and now we're *undoing* that progress!

Your post is overly simplistic. There's no such thing as "unregulated capitalism" in practice. That doesn't mean certain capitalistic ideals aren't important, just that to pretend it's a real thing, and an all-good thing, leads one to ignore better options, or even just non-imaginary options, simply because they are socialist or democratic in nature.