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."

Comments

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

[Qzukk]

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"

[Anonymous Coward]

From most big phone companies.

Simply call them up and say you want a pair of OC12s (622mbps each).

If you cough up the cash (more than HK wants), they'll be happy to deliver it to you.

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

[the_unknown_soldier]

I'm sick of Americans complaining about being behind. In australia the standard internet conenction is 512kb/s. The advertised plans have download limits of 200 meg. There is no such thing as "unlimited" in Australian Technology. Stop complaining, you are tonnes better than us.

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

[genrader]

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.

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

[AtariAmarok]

"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"

[gordo3000]

you shouldn't get that argument, it has no real basis. It is usually easier to upgrade from the old, especially when you can use certain things that are still in place. It is also easier because you usually have a workforce with experience in doing this sort of stuff and therefore are better prepared for the problems they will face.

More realistically, not enough Americans demand that bandwidth. It's like tv on cell phones. We hardly have it and it's common in Japan. Is this bad thing? of course not. Unless there is some horrible form of market failure, it would get produced at about how every much people want.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Thats one of the problems in America. Stupid politicians and stupider companies. Until recently we have no "cable conduits" in most of the cities here. Ever noticed how often roads get ripped up to lay cable underneath them? Thats because until the people started complaining enough, it wasn't enough of an issue to justify the expense of doing any additional work. Besides, someone has to keep the road construction crews employed.

Even now most places don't lay conduit due to liability and management concerns: "Hey, someone cut my cable! And what the hell is this bundle of cable doing filling up the whole conduit? What a hog!"

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so America isn't behind, the telco just makes sure everything costs more here.

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

[FidelCatsro]

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"

[Ironsides]

Seeing as how most internet backbones are OC-1 or OC-3 (45,135mbps), having the extra bandwidth don't do jack for download/upload speeds and pingtimes. You might as well stick with (at most) the 100mbps that Japan has. The only thing this extra bandiwdth is good for, is buying TV from your internet provider.

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

[bobtodd]

Uh, dude that's nonsense, there are any number of 1.5/256 plans available in Oz with generous quotas, if you can get ADSL, and some people are able to get 8/1 (speaking only of plans widely available as retail offerings).

Sorry, but maybe you should spend some time shopping around on Whirlpool, it sounds like you're getting ripped off. It's no Hong Kong, but there are better and more affordable options that your absurd suggestion, and it's improving all the time.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but I regularly max out my bandwidth.

Here in london, the most I can get cheaply is 8Mbit ADSL with a crappy 2mbit upload.

While there are only a few sites out there that benefit from having that much bandwidth, I am sharing it with my family and frequently find it maxed.

If I has 100mbit for that price, I would rarly use it at max capacity, but everything else would be as fast as it can get.

No more waiting ages for updates to download, steam would run faster, MS patches would be much faster, all without slowing everyone else down.

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

[lskutt]

I don't "get it". How does "not having anything in the first place" make it cheaper and easier?

One word: Politics.

Government, Corporate, Local... It's all the same in that aspect -- it slows everything the hell down.

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

[yabos]

I think the idea is that it makes it a lot faster within the network, while Internet speeds are still limited. Many asian countries have all the services within the network that they need so for the most part they can get really high speeds, above the backbone speed.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Here in london, the most I can get cheaply is 8Mbit ADSL with a crappy 2mbit upload.

Many (urban) parts of Australia now have access to ADLS2 trials and ADSL2+ may not be far away. It may not be home gigabit bit it should fill the hole nicely until the powerline broadband trials come to market (3 companies running those iirc).

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

[wlan0]

Sadly, we are. I pay 35 dollars for a bad 128k.

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

[register_ax]

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.

The reason you don't "get it" is because you don't realize the impact of captalist economies coupled with lack of geographical world knowledge. Market economies work as getting a better product to the people at lower prices. Or in the case of British Virgin Mobile not raping me by locking me into a contract. If people don't realize what's being offered to them, and let's face it, AOL advertising will be the pushing force for wider broadband access although this is changing; people are actually starting to get a clue ...

To get to my point, since telco lines are leased by large corps whose goal is to profit .. they can do so with cooperation of other circumstance. Namely computers have already been bought, what is it? 80% of American homes spent a couple thousand for computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, sound system, printer, scanner, digital camera, fax ... and we keep adding to the arsenal. Of course we also made way for really cheap computers by buying them very expensively; I saw an add recently for a computer for $300 including flat panel 15in ... wow ... not to mention MIT developing a $100 laptop ... double wow. I'm 21 and when I think of it, this stuff has me taken aback. I can't imagine how older people feel.

But once again I digress ... companies can continue to rape people here because we don't know AND we don't need more, at least we're given that impression. Do you really think other countries have the same sort of threat of getting sued by the **IA? I know they have threatened, but check out Pirate Bay's legal threats section. That's some crazy stuff that I can't have the luxury of experiencing; I can still have the **IA subpoena my ISP for accessing the site, and then potentially tracking data transfer between that link and me ... I mean they are my ISP afterall (comcast; who also had the nerve to try to buy Disney).

It's not as easy to just say "hey, let's just change this tire" when the threads are obviously still good. That's the perception we have, and the corps can make more money by not spending. I know this is only one person, but I have a 3 Mb down and 386 Kb up for $45/month. I run a web server and email server. It gets pumped through a openBSD 486dx firewall. I have wireless and what not. I occasionally download from P2P networks but more often from newsgroups. I use the internet extensively. I'm connected by a 1900+ AMD XP, 1 GB of ram on linux. I have no plans for upgrading my computer for at least a couple more years either. For the moment this speed is all I need. Would it not be cheaper and easier to upgrade. I guess I could get a 2800+ AMD and another gig of RAM, but would I really see a difference? Probably not. I don't think the majority of the rest of America would either.

Then again I see how you have a point. I had 512 MiB of RAM before I upgraded a few months back and 3 years ago I had a 15 flat panel which I gave to my grandmother and got me a 17 in flat panel. But it's not really cheaper because I could never recoup what I already had spent in that case. The ram was a good deal, but that's about all you can "add to" and get more. Most everything else is replacement which is mostly what you would have to do with wires and what not with the telco lines. I don't know though, you could maybe put up a few more COs, but then you would forget my other point above, we're made to think we are doing f

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

[Regul8or]

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.

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

[Atrax]

There is no such thing as "unlimited" in Australian Technology.

You're with the wrong ISP. To plug the one I'm with:

ISP.net.au

I just upgraded to the 1.5/256 unlimited plan, and I use quite a lot of the bandwidth on.... err... research. Yeah, research. *cough*

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

[jsantos]

I think this has become a myth that started with cell phones (for which it is not a myth). With cellphones, people in countries with no infrastructure jumped directly to cellphones, which I guess were cheaper than installing landlines.

The same thing could happen to free software.

But I don't see how this could be applied to replacing cables.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless there is some horrible form of market failure, it would get produced at about how every much people want.

You mean "Market Failure" as in lack of education? I bet the masses don't even know they could have been getting TV on their cellphone for years now.

Of course, its not the fault of capitalism that companies don't educate people about things that they plan on selling as an upgrade in 4 or 5 years to convince people to throw away the old phones and buy new ones.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, those corporations are able to be monopolistic primarily because of government regulation through PUDs, FCC, etc...

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

[Doppler00]

Here's my theory:
In order to install new cabling in the ground or on telephone poles requires an immense amount of paper work, regulation, and other beuracracies. Also include the cost of american labor to dig trenches and things start looking pretty unreasonable.

My guess is maybe the environment is different in asian countries to allow these rapid upgrades of infrastructure.

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

[Molon Lave]

I'm afraid you made an error about the speed of OC-3. OC-3 is actually 155.52Mbps, not 45,135. Here's the chart on

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

[Adams4President]

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.

It goes like this: say I (individual OR company) purchase a desktop PC for $2000. So if I keep that PC for 1 year, it has cost me $2000/yr. If I keep it for 2 yrs, the cost has dropped to $1000/yr and so on. If I replace that computer every year with a bleeding edge PC, it costs me $2000/yr.

But, if I replace that PC every 5 years, it only costs me $400/yr. Pretty simple logic, but I guess it needs to be spelled out.

And when you get into the million dollar networking equipment, companies hope for their investment to last even longer.

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

[Ironsides]

45 was to mean the OC-1, I knew that an OC-1 was about the speed of a T3, and that a T3 was about 45mbps. I estitmated that. It's still in the same general area, so it still applies. Thanks for the link.

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

[gbulmash]

Look at the page. If you exceed 100 gigabits in transfer (combo of upstream and downstream) a month, you'll be charged 40 cents a gigabit in overages.

Once you factor in overhead for various transmission protocols, that 100 gigabits is about 10.5-11.5 gigabytes of actual data. Every e-mail you send out is deducted from that. Every e-mail you receive is deducted from that. Every graphic on every web page. Every advertisement including a streaming video...

Now, the average household that doesn't do file trading will be okay. But if you have such a line and your teenager leaves a peer-to-peer app on day after day, not throttling the outgoing bandwidth, you'll wake up to a $300 bandwidth bill one month.

You can buy "fatpacks" which allows you to pre-buy additional bandwidth for as little as $0.20 a gigabit. But there are still going to be some people who get a big surprise in future bills.

What I think would be smart on the part of the telco is to try to infect you with spyware that sends out a constant stream of data. If you don't catch it, you end up with a $1,500 bandwidth bill at the end of the month and they tell you that you are responsible for keeping clean of spyware.

- Greg

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

[Boltronics]

Yeah... for AU$145.00 a month! That's very expensive for just a 1.5 connection. I just came back from Hong Kong a month ago, and had a much cheaper "unlimited downloads" 3Mbps. Once you've had the good stuff, anything Australia has to offer (in country Victoria at least) will feel like crap. It's really hard to justify paying through the nose for something that's still going to feel much worse anyway, so I'm still on a much cheaper 512k connection.

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

[Charcharodon]

I don't know about you but I'm moving to Hong Kong

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

[SCVirus]

Hmm... lets think about this... how does it cost more to buy a new $10 cable then to replace your old cable with a $10 cable? Other then the money you spent on the old cable its the same thing.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

The Keitai TV is a good product in Asia and not the USA for two simple reasons. Our transportation system and boredom. Most people take the train to and from work. During your daily 1-2hr commute you can read manga, if you can get a seat you might sleep or you might use your phone's camera function to snap photos of what's under that cute girl's skirt (generally frowned upon), you could play a game if you've downloaded 1 or you could watch TV. All very good ideas if you don't want to go crazy on the daily commute.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Provided you upload at full speed a whole month (you can easily accomplish this if you are connected to a file sharing network) you will get an astronomical bill of $52000

(0.2/((1000)))*(100*3600*24*30)

Can neighbors share/resell.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Can neighbors share/resell.

[grolschie]

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

Re:Can neighbors share/resell.

[genrader]

Non-wealthy people live in Hong Kong?

Re:Can neighbors share/resell.

[yabos]

They can share 54 Mbit and have 946 Mbit left for themselves.

Re:Can neighbors share/resell.

[Tango42]

Yes, they do. The expats are rich, but the locals are often very poor by western standards (I doubt many are particularly poor by asian standards, but that's really relevant)

Re:Can neighbors share/resell.

[Anonymous Coward]

but the locals are often very poor by western standards

Hong Kong has a per capita GDP higher than the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Italy, and higher than EU as a whole. So you are correct if by "western" you meant just USA.

Source:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/fac tbook/ranko rder/2004rank.html

Re:Can neighbors share/resell.

[Tango42]

I British - I certainly wouldn't mean USA when I say western.

The GDP may be higher, but it's much less evenly distributed.

shouldnt it be

[FidelCatsro]

. 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

[SithGod]

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

Re:shouldnt it be

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wouldnt trust running that much data over cat5 in an office enviroment , let alone a large scale WAN.

Re:shouldnt it be

[pomac]

Fibre, dude, fibre... There is nothing else that can handle this load.

Re:shouldnt it be

[Anonymous Coward]

Fiber indeed. I would be worried about voltage differentials when running copper over anything larger than a three-storey building.

Re:shouldnt it be

[Khyber]

Most of our own hard drives can't even access information at 1Gbps yet, unless you're running 10-15k RPM drives and have Serial ATA across the board. As it is, at 1Gbps, I'd could see P2P becoming so fast that the RIAA/MPAA would have a hard time stopping anyone/thing. At speeds like that it'd only be a matter of a few short days before one file theoretically has hit every computer connected to the net in a P2P network. Fiber optics is nice, but seeing as radio waves travel at light speed as well, either fiber or Gigabit wireless would work.

Re:shouldnt it be

[Limax Maximus]

nah, it should read Cat5e only I typo'ed it. Ok?

More seriously running gig over fibre will only get you 550 metres on Multimode and AFAIK no vendors currently do 10gig over multimode fibre so any 'future proof' installation is going to be single mode. This is much more expensive to install and terminate than multimode. In the medium term Cat5e or cat6 is ideal for building installations. How many office blocks do you know that run fibre to the desktop?

Re:shouldnt it be

[Anonymous Coward]

1:) they cant stop anyone really now anyway.
2:) Most harddrives could easily handel that type of transmission rate as it is cached and piped so when it can handle it , it will (ATA 100 is 800Mbit) , so could easily handle it(ram and cach use would be high if you ever got Peak but that would be rare , plus anyone paying for this will likely have eithe SATA , RAID arrays , SCSI drives if they intend on using the full ammount , though most of the time the data will never see your HDD .

Re:shouldnt it be

[FidelCatsro]

I actualy ment to type cat6/5e but acidently deleted the later part aswell (i need to remember to hit preview)

Re:shouldnt it be

[rob_squared]

Or CAT5e, if you want to live dangerously.

Re:shouldnt it be

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wouldnt trust running that much data over cat5 in an office enviroment , let alone a large scale WAN.

Trust, but verify. It's not hard to make sure you cables are working. You're not going to see data corruption.

Re:shouldnt it be

[bohnsack]

Two quick examples of 10GigE adapters that do support operation over multi-mode fiber: Intel Pro/10GbE and Neterion (was S2IO) XframeII.

Re:shouldnt it be

[smeenz]

No, but it should be Cat5E, not Cat5.

Cat 6 isn't actually useful for anything yet, as you can do it all with 5E. The installation cost of 6 is higher as well as it has to be handled more carefully.. you have to use velcro straps instead of cable ties for example.

Re:shouldnt it be

[ScrewMaster]

Yeah, my company went to 1 Gb last year. All our development PCs were wired with Cat5 and had 100/1000 adapters in them already. One weekend the routers got upgraded and nobody told us. So I was copying a 100 Mb file (a setup set for our Windows app, as it happens) across the network and it copied before I could release the Return key. So I tried it again, same result. What the hell? So I installed the program onto my system over the network. Worked fine. Then I noticed that I had a gigabit connection ... according to the diagnostics it is running full speed with no faults.

Re:shouldnt it be

[dAzED1]

cat5 and cat5e are completely seperate things. Also, cat5e can only handle 1Gb over short distances, which would not be applicable to this sort of situation.

So no, it should be cat6.

HKBN BB100

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

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

Re:HKBN BB100

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you living in HK, you should know HKBN offers very bad service at a cheap price.

So consider it more like a marketing stun.

Re:HKBN BB100

[ketamine-bp]

yes, it is. but i gotta say that they have some pretty good connection to HKIX (hong kong internet exchange) and overseas bandwidth is something like 20Mbps.

But nevermind, most Hong Kong people use bandwidth for local transfer anyway - that is - bittorrent of movies, apps, stuff like that.

what for ...?

[xlyz]

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

Re:what for ...?

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

A lot of Hong Kongers, especially the adolescents, are file-sharers, and are quite fed up with other ISPs in the region, especially the two leading ISPs, Netvigator and HK Cable.

Also, for tech-related services, adolescents in the households tend to be the decision-makers.

Re:what for ...?

[Cecil B ReDemented]

Are you kidding? What kind of geek ARE you,man? With that much power *drools* the porn one could d/l! Er...I mean...the...uhm...hacking one could do?

Re:what for ...?

[JamesTRexx]

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.

Re:what for ...?

[timeOday]

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

Video on demand.

The only reason the Internet looks so different from television today is because it lacks bandwidth.

Re:what for ...?

[xlyz]

dvd quality requires 1/100 of that bandwidth
hdtv quality 1/20

so again ... what for??

Re:what for ...?

[timeOday]

Being hooked up to a gigabit network doesn't mean you get it all to yourself. I can't imagine there is really 1 gigabit of dedicated bandwidth for each individual customer.

Anyways, it would be interesting if this gave rise to a *true* "network PC," where the local PC is just a high-res television with a keyboard and mouse. You could even play 3d games without a special graphics adapter if the rendering were done remotely. Now that would eat up some bandwidth!

Re:what for ...?

[ralmin]

You could just about do that 3D gaming over a gigabit network!

Say 800*600 pixels/frame * 32 bits/pixel * 60 frames/second = 0.92 gigabit/second

Re:what for ...?

[stoborrobots]

so again ... what for??

So that the SO can watch her soppy movie on the bigscreen in the bedroom, while I watch the fuzeball in the computer-room while downloading Service Pack 2 and still get good enough pings to play HL2 at the same time?

(Note: the above is a simulation; none of those apply to me... I am single, hate football, don't do Windows, and don't play PC games... so if I messed something up, please substitute the nearest applicable idea.)

Re:what for ...?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am single, ... please substitute the nearest applicable idea.

So you really mean:

So that I can make use of slashdot journals and Firefox extensions...

Re:what for ...?

[Jorkapp]

That wouldn't be terribly cost-effective.

Cheap computer capable of rendering 2D bitmaps at 60fps: about $300.
Gigabit connection: $200/month
Cost after 1 year: (300 + 200*12) = $2700
Cost after 3 years: (300 + 200*36) = $7500

Mid-range computer capable of rendering 3D at 60fps: about $1200
1MBit ADSL connection: $30/month
Cost after 1 year: (1200 + 30*12) = $1560
Cost after 3 years: (1200 + 30*36) = $2280

Personally, I would rather eat the initial cost of the mid-range computer and save money over time. That money saved could be spent on upgrading the mid-range computer to a higher-end computer.

Re:what for ...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming your fractions are correct, HDTV 1/20th means that on a shared pipe, only 20 channels before bandwidth is an issue and that's just for that app alone.

Also, not bidirectional.

And that's RT--no buffering, no torrent-like behavior. If you want to drop and store for nonlinear video applications, you'd need more or a better compression ratio. Although I realize most people don't watch TV 24/7; the average i the US is 4 hours a day, so that bandwidth for video is probably similar to DSL is for audio--many users taking up short bursts of high bandwidth.

Oh, and that's for a 2D screen. Add 3D, more channel selection, and multiple channel watching and your bandwidth is, well, more gone.

So, while you may say what for, to me, this is more like a good start to something great.

Re:what for ...?

[TCM]

Geez, what's so bad about developing the requirement after the possibility is there?

I had a small home network with a small dumb switch. It was kinda ugly since I had to run PPPoE over the switch which sucks. So I thought, hmm, a smarter switch with VLAN-support and more ports would be cool. I didn't need the new switch, since everything "worked" as it was. Now that I have it I find myself doing more complicated VLAN stuff and learning more about network topologies etc.

Open your mind a bit.

Re:what for ...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or think about this - torrents + video streaming=
something like pay-per-view, except its free and the movie could
restarts every 15 minutes or sooner
depending on how many more people were viewing it (the more
the better)
There already are many p2p radio networks.

Firewall of China?

[AtariAmarok]

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?

[FidelCatsro]

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

Re:Firewall of China?

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It is a special autonomous region. Hong Kong is different, since the culture has been westernized. Basically it is a manifestation of the "One China, two principles" idea.

It is interesting in some respects, since it allows China a testbed for new ideas. If ideas turn out to be catastrophic (Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution) then it doesn't wreck all of China. On the other hand, it creates inequalities that their system is meant to get rid of.

Re:Firewall of China?

[L.Bob.Rife]

China has to maintain some distance from us until 2047

You sure about that? Everything I read indicates that China may not be so happy with that idea.

Re:Firewall of China?

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

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?

[kiwi.es]

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

Re:Firewall of China?

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

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?

[1u3hr]

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

No we're not. I can download as much porn, and read as much American/Falun Gong/Tibetan propaganda as I like. They do censor nipples on TV, but I gather you get that too.

Re:Firewall of China?

[1u3hr]

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

As Stalin once said, of the Pope, "How many divisions does he have?". Likewise, sir/madam, how many divisions do the citizens of hong kong command, that they may launch a "massive resistance"?

Overlords who have the advantage of time on their side typically use the salami technique: one slice of rights taken away at a time, chosen to be just thin enough to not foment resistance. Let's say they banned websites of an obscure but extreme pro-democracy movement. Would you launch your "divisions", such as they are? Nope. They they imposed a slightly larger tax on "non-conforming" businesses in hong kong -- would the capitalist west pull out? Certainly not, look what we did in South Africa for the longest time!

Then there would be meddling with the media, then the local government, then the regional government, then school systems and so on, until the end. Much like other forces are operating in the U.S. at this point.

Exercise care when thinking about your chinese overlords and watch their moves closely; they have a thousand years of experience with autocracy as part of their heritage.

Re:Firewall of China?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, our net access is not regulated or monitored by China.

It may not officially be regulated, but you can't seriously believe that it's not monitored. China only tolerates freedom so far as it benefits the state. If they felt your Internet usage was undermining the Party, I doubt any of us would hear from you again.

Re:Firewall of China?

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

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

Re:Firewall of China?

[arbi]

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.

Yes. In fact Hong Kong is ranked #1 as the freest economy in the world. Singapore is #2. Strangely enough the USA is only ranked #12.

Source: 2005 Index of Economic Freedom

Faster, but for what?

[Dancin_Santa]

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?

[Libor Vanek]

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

Re:Faster, but for what?

[FidelCatsro]

Your confusing "Getting ripped off" with "wasting your money".
If you dont need it , don't buy it .

Re:Faster, but for what?

[Lil-Bondy]

dont think youll get a girl :P i dont think they are turned on by that stuff, well, not most of them

Re:Faster, but for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just pissed off that they can get 1gbps and you can't. You're also one of those Americans (read: every American) who hates Asia (and developing countries). And now, *Asians* can get it but you can't, so you're understandably pissed off.

Re:Faster, but for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well thanks Captain Obvious. The average Joe isn't exactly going to shell out 215USD/month for a service like this if they only browse the occasional website. The public are generally stupid, but not THAT stupid.

Re:Faster, but for what?

[farnz]

I'm on 2MBit broadband, but for me, large content downloads (http://www.gbjab.com/ for example) are not instant. My connection is fast enough when I cannot perceive the difference between a page already cached on my local machine, and a page downloaded from the remote server. This includes big downloads like OpenOffice installers, or Windows service packs.

Re:Faster, but for what?

[tokennrg]

And the bot-herders over the world rejoice. If you're going to run a bot net, why use compromised boxes in the US where upload is mostly 512K. Tons of shiny new hosts in Asia to play with that have massive upload speeds. New Super Ultra Mega Happy Fun DDoS, coming to a network near you!

Re:Faster, but for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Downloading multi-cd OSes (solaris 10 etc) isn't instant by a long way. It took ~10 minutes on my 100 Mbit connection, so an extra factor of 10 would be appreciated. Mind you, my hard drives can only handle about 300 Mbits so for file transfers I can't mostly buffer into RAM gigabit wouldn't be that useful. I can totally recommend a 100 Mbit connection though. sshing and X-forwarding to work is as snappy as being at the machine, I can shuffle files back and forth very easily etc.

For an average home user, forget gigabit. For an average geek, bring it on.

Re:Faster, but for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

We are as fast as we need to be.

This type of statement has always been wrong.

Re:Faster, but for what?

[XFilesFMDS1013]

Plus, if it was right, those the viagra ads wouldn't work. You're as big as you need to be. I don't see marketing liking that.

Re:Faster, but for what?

[gh5046]

Q:
Faster, but for what?
A:
VoIP
Streaming Video
Streaming Audio
Games
File transfer
Big Brother

The last one is a joke, but imagine having a TV for each person, and they all can access different shows/news reports/movies/etc. This would especially come in handy if you had more than one HDTV. Telephone lines (VoIP) can also run over this wire, allowing everyone in the home/business to have their own line.

If you told me I could have all of my media access over one line for $215/mo I'd jump on it.

I have 3mbps/512kbps DSL. I don't even spend 1/10th my time suring the world wide web, and yet I find myself longing for a faster connection.

Re:Faster, but for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, for a $100 month cable bill I can have a lousy asymetrical connection to log onto torrent for my new linux distro at 40 Kb/sec. Now that is progress!

Re:Faster, but for what?

[homgran]

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

Find me a connection with that much bandwidth and I'll happily show you how to piss it all away. ;)

Re:Faster, but for what?

[Zone-MR]

If you're only using the internet for an hour or two a day (and who among us doesn't?)

I think you're posting this on the wrong site ;)

Re:Faster, but for what?

[Nirvelli]

Your "nightly build" of Linux could actually be updated every night.

Re:Faster, but for what?

[Krunch]

We are as fast as we need to be.

640KB ought to be enough.

Nice... but

[AndyboyH]

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?

Re:Nice... but

[wahsapa]

what can you do?

you can piggy back TV, Phone, Radio and Internet all on one connection into someones house. It's about getting more done, not getting one thing done faster.

i predict a Television-Video-Phone-Stereo coming out of HK soon.

Re:Nice... but

[Anonymous Coward]

Usability really.

You are right--Servers are already the bottleneck. Even on DSL or cable modem services in the US grabbing 3-4 Mbit/sec, network protocol lag and servers are the bottleneck.

The main advantage though is downloading audio and video, esp. nonlinear video. Instead of downloading 2 gigabytes of video is, say, 4 hours, it'd be like downloading a 20mb file is now. That's a massive difference in convenience and usability.

If bidirection, the economics for small startups is superb. Such bandwidth also allows small startups and outlets to act more like big media outlets, which gives them more chances of growth. A rack in an apartment could serve footage to a select group of people or a distribution points or seed torrent files, etc. If I'd were a small content provider with big plans, I'd be drooling at this bandwidth.

Why is this so cheap?

[neomage86]

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?

[xstein]

Not so.

Read the fine print. Overseas bandwidth is capped at 20mbits. (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.

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[xstein]

Sorry for replying to my own post, found an English link. The same 20mbits overseas bandwidth cap is imposed on the currently available 100mbit service too.

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the usage of the bandwith is not only for long-distance internet access.

Amongs other use : video on demand (MPEG2 can go as high as 40 Mbit/s), P2P, teleworking, ...

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[Eyeball97]

It's cheap, because bandwidth is all a game of numbers/averages. They have a potential 800,000 customers - that's close to US$2M/mo revenue. That's a healthy mark-up over cost although their bandwidth isn't their only cost, infrastructure and support would also add considerably to their monthly expenses.

Keep it in perspective too. A gig sounds a lot, it's not. Feeding only 1,000 customers guarantees them only 1Mbps each. Make that 10,000, they're only guaranteed 100kbps each. Of course, they'd only get such "low" speeds if every customer was simultaneously hoovering off the bandwidth - which never happens - so the "burst" rate would always be good. Not sure where you get the idea that they'd need to offer a CIR of 50Mbps to every customer...

Look at it another way. If they hook up all 800,000 customers they can only "guarantee" them 1.2 BITS per second each, yet it works...

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[rob_squared]

Don't try mixing OC or T lines with consumer based access. OC-48 has the same speed up and down, almost no consumer based connection methods do that, not Dial-up, not cable, and with 1 exception, neither does DSL.

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[nightemaster]

if i'm not mistaken, OC-48 is 2.488 Gbps according to http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition /0,,sid7_gci212685,00.html

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[mordejai]

Well, it's not that bad... I pay about USD 35 a month for TV + cablemodem at 256kbps... the best service I can get is 2mbps, and it's USD 100...

And this is in the most important city of South America.

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sao Paulo?

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[lordkuri]

and that would still be about $15,000 a month.

what the hell kinda crack are you smoking? I just had a DS3 from UUNet pulled into my office for feeding a wireless ISP I'm starting on June 1, and it's a flat $4,000/mo, including loop charges.

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[aaarrrgggh]

More importantly, the OC links have a hell of a lot more redundancy than a consumer connection...

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[evilviper]

1 gbps is more bandwidth than an OC-48, which run for about 700,000 US dollars/month.

Yes, and DSL is as fast or faster than a T-1 line, while costing about 1/10th as much... They haven't been having any problems selling dedicated T-1 lines, have they?

A big company needs real reliability, not just a best-effort delivery system. Maybe start-ups and small/home offices can go with the cheaper options, but this really won't be cutting much into anyone's profits.

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your just a hair off on hyour pricing neomage.You can get a gig of IP for a fraction of what you are talking about. You are talking 2.5 gig with a OC-48, so granted, it's over double the bandwidth, but $700,000? Somebody give you that price circa 1998 or something?

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dallas

This already exists in Sweden.

[pomac]

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

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[genrader]

Wait, I'm American, what does 118,60 mean?

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[ect5150]

The US is too far behind on this. For a bit less than half that price mentioned ($118), a lot of people in the US are lucky to get 5 Mbit download and 50Kbit upload at $50.

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[FidelCatsro]

Sweeden has for a long time been in the lead for Broadband connections (atleast in europe and im fairly sure the only competitor to the supremacy has been japan till today), I know atleast 3 people who are on an 100Mbit pipe from bredband , It quite literaly puts the rest of the world to shame in terms of price and capacity and has done for years.

If these companys can afford to do this in sweeden , then i would love to hear the excuses of the companys in other lands , for example why you pay on average about 40USD for a 1MB line(note:statistic pulled out of the air , but based on experiance).
In germany im paying near 50 Euros a month (70USD) for a 3Mbit conection, A bit of social awareness of how badly the rest of the world is getting ripped off May shake a few things up.

The average consumer may not care about the details of the internet conection they have , but i know the average consumer does'nt like to pay more for less..

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[pomac]

Well it's your currency, you guess.

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[pomac]

Well bredband has a quota limit on their 100mbit connections and it's expencive compared to this bredband2. It's the same guy who started bredband that started bredband2 =).

Well Sweden has some governement funding to make sure that everyone gets access to internet, that is, even ppl that live far out in the wilderness, so far there is no 100% coverage though. In Lund, where i live we have public free access points as well, =).

Well the average consumer should still care about what they pay for their connection =).

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[geminidomino]

Either GP was trying for a +1, Funny mod, or he was confused by the overseas use as a comma for a decimal point.

I have to admit it still throws me when I see it.

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[bird603568]

118.60

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[pomac]

Yeah, i currently pay 47,44 USD for my 10mbit (symetric) unlimited connection of which 2,79 USD is because i want to get a real bill sent home =).

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[pomac]

Ahh, i forgot all about that...

You guys use ',' for thousands etc seperator... =)

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[FidelCatsro]

Ah I didnt know bredband2 was difrent ,I have been tempted to move to sweeden for the pure fact of those internet conections (and some well paying jobs)problem is i dont speak sweedish and dont have the time to learn ;).
I was reading up on the on the sweedish policys regaurding the internet and i must say ,I'm impresed with how forward looking this area of policy is there .

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the Netherlands our government had the brilliant idea to privatise the telecom service. Now we have one giant monopoly and people pay too much. So much for free market capitalism...

Additionally, all ISP's have to store _all_ internet traffic for our government. The users pay with both their money and freedom. 1984 is coming close real fast, and almost everyone is oblivious to it.

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[Anonymous Coward]

what you are meaning is that americans use a point for a decimal comma, right? ;)

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[pomac]

Well, Most if not all people in sweden speaks english... Some of the older generation might have more or less good english but generally ppl coming from England and USA dosn't take the time to learn swedish at all (we don't dub all tv shows/movies either).

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[FidelCatsro]

:( im from scotland so im screwed hee along with the aussies , kiwis and irish etc .
Seriously though , Yeah when i last visited sweeden it was great as alot of people would but it half way through my ballsed up phrase book readings and speak to me in english .

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[pomac]

Well saving all the internet traffic isn't possible and all the new laws and stuff coming is broken thinking imho. I just wonder when 'the-law-makers' will realise it....

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[Anonymous Coward]

5 Mbit download and 50Kbit upload

Erm.. typo there? Any amount of downloading requires some amount of uploading (ie ACK packets).

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[Atryn]

If you don't mind my asking, where do you live? Is this available in rural areas as well or are you in one of the major cities?

Re:This already exists in Sweden.

[pomac]

Lund, A university town about 20km from Malmö.

And no, the countyside has much less coverage, but you might get 2mbit ot 1/8 combos depending on how far from a town you live.

Excuse me, but

[imsabbel]

how is paying more for a faster line you dont use "getting ripped off"?
Its not like they force people to use this option...

Supporting legislation required...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that anyone abusing this marvel to spam the world be stood up in front of a firing squad immediately!

fast BB

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say im on a 100Mbit line in the uk and no websites with the exception of a small few (www.microsoft.com for example!!) can actually keep up with that, I stuggle to fill the bandwidth as it is, why would anyone want to buy 10x this amount?? Crazy, but never the less cool.

Re:fast BB

[JPickard]

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

Re:fast BB

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah im on a 100mbit connection to one of the main backbone servers in the uk, part of the janet group(uni network), but were lucky and get straight in no limits, so can hold 10-12Meg/sec normally :)

Conquer Taiwan

[AtariAmarok]

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

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Why doesn't China entice Taiwanese with special offers?

Because the Taiwanese block spam from China too.

Re:Conquer Taiwan

[AtariAmarok]

"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!"

Re:Conquer Taiwan

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Truly, as Confucious says, "Man with large tools nails better."

Re:Conquer Taiwan

[Anonymous Coward]

' China, where they see the men standing on the shore taunting them by waving their prodigious giant penises '

In Chinese terms, that's 5 inches.

A communist sandbox?

[AtariAmarok]

"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:A communist sandbox?

[FidelCatsro]

Wooosh straight over my head ;) , we never got any Anti-communist jokes in my neck of the woods hee.I seem to remember one ,about Lennin and mcarthy and when they will release a follow up to the white album.

Re:A communist sandbox?

[Compuser]

For those not from Russia:
The colloquial form of referring to sugar powder in
Russia is "sand", so when the above joke works
much better in Russian. It arose when there were
shortages of sugar in late eighties.
The full joke goes: "... 70 years of mirages and then
rationing of sand."

Re:A communist sandbox?

[ywl]

"Sandbox" is not the direct translation from the Chinese version but it does capture the meaning very well.

It's a sandbox in the sense that the people from both places refraining from influence each others politically.

from TFA

[pasokon]

...enables the carrier to converge its legacy voice and data services and a new pay-TV service into a single platform, and at the same time offer Layer 2 and 3 IP services using Resilient Packet Ring (RPR)-ready ML Series line cards. The network enables HKBN to deliver up to 200 digital pay-TV channels via MPEG-2 at 4.5 Mbps to 10 Mbps with DVD visual quality. Its service also features interactive pay-TV elements and enables PC or TV connection with the aid of a set-top box.

DVD-quality digital broadcasts, and VOIP-like service (?)
sounds interesting to me.

Cat5? I don'think so.

[Colin Smith]

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.

Re:Cat5? I don'think so.

[ketamine-bp]

well, they are actually doing what we call Fiber to the home (as opposed to fiber to the building "FTTB").

only the last few meters (as opposed to last mile) is Cat5(e).

Where to buy cat 5e?

[phoebe]

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.

Symmetric! service

[Anonymous Coward]

"The 1 Gbps symmetric service is priced at US$215 per month."

Note that the service is symmetric. For $215/month you will barely be able to get 768 Kbits/sec symmetric service in New York. Incompetent morons at Verizon simply cannot do any better in their core market.

Meanwhile, In Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Meanwhile, In Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Er, what? ADSL2+ is 24Mbps, what level of service would that be? ADSL talking-out-your-ass?

Re:Meanwhile, In Japan

[Crescens]

Not $20, but looks like Yahoo! BB offers 50mbit service also there.

Yahoo! BB

Re:Meanwhile, In Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

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

> Er, what? ADSL2+ is 24Mbps, what level of
> service would that be? ADSL
> talking-out-your-ass?

Actually, just to be Pedantic, NTT East currently offers ADSL at 1.5, 8, 12, 24, 40 and 47 Mbps. How do they do it? I dunno. They must just be talking out of their ass (on all their web pages and promotional material).

- AC

Re:Meanwhile, In Japan

[petermgreen]

possiblly bonded dsl

if you can get multiple pairs you can bond them (ie run say 12 megabits each down 4 pairs or whatever)

this situation is good if you wan't to get lots of bandwidth for a few customers and have the spare pairs handy or can make them availible by multiplexing other peoples pots lines using systems like dacs (dacs is a system used by bt to put two pots lines down a single pair i suspect other telcos have similar tools)

Re:Meanwhile, In Japan

[AndyMcL]

Hahahaha! You show him!

My wife is Japanese and wants to move back to Japan. I told her a few years ago that so long as I have fast Internet access, I will be happy. We have gone back a bunch of times and I have been watching the changes in Japan. In the mid 90's I used to make fun of Japan, but now, like all G7 countries, they kick our butt with regards to broadband services.

HHhhhmmmmm......I don't have any more excuses of why not to move to Japan.....I used to complain about housing prices as well as Internet. Prices are about the same as Japan where I live now.

-Andy

Thanks to piracy

[vitalyb]

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

[pkarlos_76]

Uhh I would use it for streaming video and music content off the net into every room of my house. Does that fulfill the quantity you want? And if we had this do you not think so someone would not offer content we demand?

Re:Thanks to piracy

[yabos]

FTA "Cisco's ONS 15454 MSPP enables the carrier to converge its legacy voice and data services and a new pay-TV service into a single platform, and at the same time offer Layer 2 and 3 IP services using Resilient Packet Ring (RPR)-ready ML Series line cards. The network enables HKBN to deliver up to 200 digital pay-TV channels via MPEG-2 at 4.5 Mbps to 10 Mbps with DVD visual quality. Its service also features interactive pay-TV elements and enables PC or TV connection with the aid of a set-top box."

Re:Thanks to piracy

[1u3hr]

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.

Re:Thanks to piracy

[zakezuke]

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

AV conferencing
AV streaming, i.e. network TV/HDTV
Remote terminal access
VPN
Net conferencing

I would think that any service that permits people to work without the use of transportation would be of great benifit to any large city. I would think piracy isn't the only application.

*cries*

[Phil246]

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

Re:*cries*

[woah]

UK Online does 8 Meg for 30 quid/month. (There's a 500 Gig cap tho). (They also have a very cheap 2Mbps.)

Re:*cries*

[Phil246]

the most my local phone exchange can handle though is 2mbit :( so im stuck with that as an upper limit for adsl

Re:*cries*

[woah]

:( indeed.

Re:*cries*

[giant_toaster]

At Bath uni its a free unrestricted 100Mbps connection in my room!

P2P

[MarkByers]

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.

Re:P2P

[AndyboyH]

as I said though: what can you actually do with it _apart from share files between neighbours/towns?_ P2P's great and all, but if it's all HK traffic people can get bored of it. Plus if the connection to the outside world from HK can't sustain a multitude of gigabyte per second connections, anything incoming will seem plenty slower unless they also put caching infrastructure in to support it.

Re:P2P

[merdaccia]

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.

That's not really true.

Given your reference to "file pieces", I'm assuming you're talking about BitTtorrent. In which case, saying that "the more popular a download is, the faster it can be downloaded" is misleading at best. The download speed of your torrent is independent of the number of people involved in it. Your download speed is simply a function of how much upload capacity is available. In fact, for a given upload capacity, the more popular the download the slower your speed, because that upload capacity has to be shared by more people. Of course, the more people you have, the more upload capacity you have, but given the disparity between upload and download speeds, each member of a torrent will likely increase demand more than increase supply and slow you down.

The dynamic of BitTorrent will change for the better in the HK setting, however. The article claims their data rates will be symmetric. Given sufficient dissemination of random chunks, having equal upload capacity as download capacity means the bandwidth disparity doesn't exist, and those torrents will fly. For BitTorrent, the tracker can easily become a central bottleneck.

Re:P2P

[MarkByers]

You make a good point that the tracker could be a bottleneck, but it is quite a small amount of traffic when you consider the bandwidths we are talking about. It is possible to set up more than one tracker for the same file, to spread the load if it does become a problem.

As for the upload/download speed disparity: you you are assuming that people are not going to share when their download is finished (or that they are downloading 24/7 ?).

BitTorrent does not encourage people to share because when you close the window, it stops sharing. Most people probably do not leave files sharing very long after the download has completed. EMule is probably a better example, since it can minimise to the system tray and continue sharing all your files without getting in the way.

CAT5e, not CAT5

[base_chakra]

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

[a_greer2005]

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?

Re:RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Cox here in northern Virginia, and upload is 512kbit. They filter incoming requests on port 80, but you can run a server on any other port. They don't appear to throttle anything, and I didn't get any letters after uploading about 30 GB in a month. By U.S. standards, I think that's pretty darn good.

This is OLD news ...

[ondjultomte]

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.

Faster than we need?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed alot of people are saying things like "what average user needs this." Or "hah, how fast do we really need it. pages already load fast enough"

What we fail to realize is as advancements in technology arrive, our software needs will move to conform. Right now, alot of webdesigners still need to design with slow connections in mind. In the future, cable/high speed dial up may be considered slow, with fast as things like 100Gbit. Websites would become more complex, and we would have much more dynamic internet pages.

People used to ask "why would we ever need a 1gig hard drive?" Well, because the things we could do with it increased. And if 100Gbit connections are widely available, then the things we can do with the internet will vastly increase. Think of the possibilities...

It's therefore unfair to say that this is stupid and useless. It is an advancement that is not yet useful for the average internet surfer, but it is still an advancement with alot of potential.

Servers

[Smukatele]

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

56k 4 me

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn Australia....

Torrents

[Kwirl]

I can't wait to find torrent trackers seeded on this bandwidth, I can't download star wars fan spoofs fast enough on 6mbps from comcast :(

Japan = same speed and alot cheeper.

[bardothodal]

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

I love the Commie's

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why I love communism! F'king greedy a$$ capitalist pigs. I spit on my 6Mb/s down 712Kb/s up for $60 a month connection.

upload speeds

[psmurf]

not so, I can get DSL with 3mbit down, 768kbit up ... 3-6x the speeds you quote, and this is in York PA ... hardly a tech hotspot. (there aren't even really any tech jobs unless you want to drive an hour to baltimore).

Shut up.

[Micah]

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

Re:Shut up.

[Anonymous Coward]

You pay about $1.50/kb, I pay $3.o4/kbUSD and have a 3G limit.Can not send ( in e-mail) more that 5Mb..Hard to send pictures sometimes..Last speed test was 291 down/337 up. Tryed to down load Linux..took 12hrs..ended at 16.7mb/sec..But this is only op..

cabling is so 90's...

[sponga]

who says we'll even be using as much cable in 5-10 years with all the advances in wireless technologies.

Re:cabling is so 90's...

[petermgreen]

maybe not quite as much but probablly still quite a lot

also iirc there is some point in the spectrum above which water vapour in the air gives huge attenuation. (i think its somewhere around 20ghz but don't quote me on that)

maybe we will see gigabit wireless but i doubt we will see much above that and even then there are likely to be contention problems

cables (copper fiber whatever) keep your data within a controlled and private environment giving you basically limitless total capacity. (ie you can zip-tie 100 cat5 cables together and still run them all at 100mbit try getting 100 similtanius wireless links at that speed)

dont forget real time compression.

[Anonymous Coward]

that will allow more users.

Capitalist sandbox

[AtariAmarok]

Thanks for the insight. The Capitalist version of it probably ends with "...and then you find you can't do anything because someone has patented sand dunes."

Internet download

[Anonymous Coward]

Downloading the Internet.....done.

cell service = market failure

[Heisenbug]

If I had to pick five words to describe the cell market in the US, they would be "horrible form of market failure." This is because 1) the only decisive factor for choosing a cell provider for most people is coverage and reception, 2) starting a new network with competitive coverage is so expensive it's essentially impossible.

The upshot is, the three or four national competitors who can afford to stay in the game compete on coverage, and cooperate on shafting their customers in every way possible. A prime example is phones -- you have to buy a phone with that provider's brand, even though all the phones could work with all the providers, because there's no market force pushing the providers to open it up.

Re:cell service = market failure

[stevejsmith]

Locking cell phones should be outlawed in the US, no question. It's a completely artificial barrier whose only purpose is to make switching to different providers more expensive for consumers without giving them any benefit at all.

Yeah, but what's the latency?

[Anonymous Coward]

Something tells me that this service is delivered in the form of a guy towing a shitload of pirated DVDs in a rickshaw.

Going to college in HK...

[niteice]

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?

[tji]

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.

Simple economics

[nikster]

If i already have expensive infrastructure in place which delivers 1MBPs, i will think very long and hard about upgrading to 100MBPs. How many users will I gain? 1MBPs might just be good enough. I made an investment in this old infrastructure and the longer i can keep it running, the better my return.

If, on the other hand, I have no infrastructure, then I can put in the latest technology for the exact same price an older tech would cost me, or just a little bit more. In this case, it's more economical to put in the faster solution.

Not that difficult, eh?

Re:Simple economics

[Anonymous Coward]

How many users will I gain? 1MBPs might just be good enough. I made an investment in this old infrastructure and the longer i can keep it running, the better my return.

Except if you don't upgrade, a competitor will come and kill you. This is exactly what happened to France Telecom, after EU forced the telecom market to be open - the base 512 kpbs/64kbps offer of France Telecom and all competitor, in two years of time, has now evolved to around 20Mbps/1Mbps in offers by free.fr in the areas where they could put equipment (plus bonus free many TV channel, and free local phone).

This is specially stupid behavior, because France Telecom had ample time to improve it offers (but prefered not to kill the 1 Mpbs leased link at 500$/month I guess).

Skype is another example of how the stupid behavior, of refusing to pass on advances in technology to users, is just creating yourself a future big competitor.

Porn

[glrotate]

Imagine being able to pull down full DVD's in a few minutes.

640k is enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you. You're that guy that said '640k is enough for anybody'...

You think *that's* cheap.... Jeebus

[rsborg]

What's more than the cheapness of this offering is the inexpensive "lower-bandwidth" offerings (all of which are much less than my $45/mo comcast 4Mbs/384kbs):

HKBN Premium bb1000 service is being offered on the same metro Ethernet infrastructure that delivers the company's Mass Market bb100 (symmetric 100 Mbps for US$34/month) and Entry Point bb10 (symmetric 10 Mbps for US$16/month) services. http://www.ctinets.com/

I live near a large chinese community, and I think the reason it's so low is that Chinese are very price-sensitive shoppers. ie, they don't shell out if the they don't feel they can afford it, or if the quality of the item is suspect. contrast this with your average american who will pay $$$ for pretty much everything.

Re:You think *that's* cheap.... Jeebus

[satans_advocate]

I live near a large chinese community, and I think the reason it's so low is that Chinese are very price-sensitive shoppers. ie, they don't shell out if the they don't feel they can afford it, or if the quality of the item is suspect. contrast this with your average american who will pay $$$ for pretty much everything.

That reminds me of a joke a Hongkie once told me.

A florist goes to the barber shop and gets a haircut. He goes to pay, but the barber stops him and says "No, today I am giving you this haircut as a community service".

The next day, the barber finds a dozen flowers on his doorstep.

Then a policeman goes to the barber shop and gets the same treatment, "No payment" the barber says ," today this haircut is part of a community service."

The next day, the barber finds a dozen doughnuts on his doorstep.

The following day, a Chinese gentlement goes to the barber shop. Again, when the Chinese gentlemen goes to pay, the barber stops him and says "No, no, today your haircut is free as part of a community service."

The next day, the barber finds a dozen Chinese people waiting on his doorstep.

But we're still behind

[speedy.carr]

Just because there is someone worse off than us does not mean we have no right to complain. In fact, the only time that one has no right to complain is when everybody is worse off than themselves. Countries below us may think less of us, but we are most certainly becoming farther and farther behind.

Streaming HD Video

[KrackHouse]

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

[InvaderSkoodge]

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

Not Cheap is Relative

[Anonymous Coward]

True--I for one won't be affording US$215 per month any time soon. On the other hand, that price compares favorably with Speakeasy's prices of $300/month for T1 and $120 for SDSL in my area, both of which are 1.1 Mbps up and down.

For Video Distribution, of course

[pixelcort]

The future of video distribution will be based on decentralized, P2P distribution technologies. Due to tit-for-tat, these tend to be as fast as the average UL speed of those in a swarm. Thus, having faster UL speeds is the real concern here. It doesn't hurt to have a 1024Mb/s DL connection, but if UL is still 256Kb/s, then it's all still moot. On the other hand, if the 1024Mb/s can be used as UL bandwidth, then we're all set for 512Mb/s each way.

Also, if we're trying to do video in real time, 512Mb/s can cram a pretty decent AV stream in such a bitrate.

Internet2

[Anonymous Coward]

What I wonder is when will Internet2 be available to the consumers?

1 Gig service in Japan over coax cable alreay done

[AndyMcL]

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

Better colours

[Anonymous Coward]

http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/23/2 057234