The Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) launched a new broadband service last Friday to 800,000 of its residential customers boasting symmetric maximum speeds of 1 Gbps. No, that wasn't a typo. That's one gigabit per second, or about 119 megabytes per second. To implement this, HKBN is deploying over 10,000 Cisco Catalyst switches and 800 Cisco routers in structures throughout Hong Kong. Buildings are interconnected with a high-speed optical network, and each customer is connected directly to a switch via CAT 5e cable. The same metro Ethernet infrastructure will be used to transmit digital television with DVD-quality MPEG-2 streams.
HKBN is offering this service for US $215 per month, an astonishingly low rate in comparison to broadband costs in the States. The same metro Ethernet infrastructure continues to deliver 100 Mbps service for US $34 per month, and 10 Mbps for a mere US $16 per month.
The network infrastructure in Hong Kong can offer customers speeds of more than double the fastest residential broadband in the United States at prices that compete with America's 56 Kbps dial-up providers. For the price of American ADSL, a residential subscriber in Hong Kong enjoys speeds that rival that of many data centers in the States. Is ADSL and Cable the narrowband of the future?
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