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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."
This is a great & affordable plan for even the non-wealthy if communiies can share it
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
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.
Actually you can run 1 Gb/s over Cat5e cabling. Cat6 is just better suited for it
Don't you hate pants?
DVD-quality digital broadcasts, and VOIP-like service (?)
sounds interesting to me.
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.
the Political Inquirer
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.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
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!"
Truly, as Confucious says, "Man with large tools nails better."
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.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
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.
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.
The only reason the Internet looks so different from television today is because it lacks bandwidth.
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.
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."
who says we'll even be using as much cable in 5-10 years with all the advances in wireless technologies.
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.