

1Gbps Symmetrical Home Broadband for $26 per mth (in Hong Kong) - albahk
http://www.hkbn.net/2010/eng/en_service1_1a5.html

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quant18
I'm rooting for HKBN (the guys making this broadband offer); even if you're
nowhere near Hong Kong, I hope it warms your heart too to see an entrepreneur
taking on slow-moving, incompetent, overfunded competitors.

The extended back story here: Hong Kong also lacks genuine competition in many
non-tradable goods sectors. The major real estate development families use
their free cash to buy up supermarkets, cellphone companies, construction
materials suppliers, and anything else that can be nailed down, and then
collude to prevent outsiders from muscling in on their territory (e.g. what
happened to Carrefour back in the late 1990s when they tried to set up grocery
stores here). HKBN are outsiders trying to improve their position in what is
basically an oligopolistic market.

HKBN's major competitors are Cable TV and Netvigator, both closely linked to
massive real-estate developers. They offer high prices, crap service, and
speeds far below what their advertisements claim, but they survive because
their salesmen have free rein to set up sales booths in their parent
companies' apartment complexes and stuff fliers in all the mailboxes and
harass every person walking out of the building. Netvigator in particular is a
subsidiary of PCCW, which is pretty much a synonym for "inherited privilege"
--- it's run (incompetently) by Richard Li, the son of Li Ka-shing (the
richest man in Asia, and the founder of real estate company Cheung Kong
Holdings).

HKBN on the other hand is owned by City Telecom, who have monopoly-smashing in
their blood: their founder Ricky Wong came out of nowhere to take on the Hong
Kong Telecom long-distance phone service monopoly back in 1992, in an
extremely rare example of a successful challenge to the tycoon families. (Hong
Kong Telecom was later bought by PCCW. I'm sure their corporate cultures were
a good match.)

~~~
philwelch
I'm amused how (presumably) Hong Kong's leading cable TV provider is actually
branded "Cable TV".

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pavs
How many of you would host your servers at home if you had a connection like
that (assuming your webserver is not several racks, just 1 or 2 quad cores)?

I know it might seem irrational, since webhosts provide more than just
bandwidth and uptime, its also about security (both physical and virtual), but
there is something about having 100% access to my server that I really enjoy.

~~~
tmbeihl
Their terms and conditions specifically prohibit operating servers. They do
not provide static ip and prohibit you from bringing your own ips.

~~~
pavs
Can you provide quote from the T&C where it states that you can't host servers
and prohibit you from have your own ips?

I just did a quick search on certain keywords but didn't find any specific
that states that you can't host servers.
[http://www.hkbn.net/TC/00_right/pdf/HKBN_Gen_T&C_Eng%202...](http://www.hkbn.net/TC/00_right/pdf/HKBN_Gen_T&C_Eng%20200712.pdf)

I know this is true for more US internet providers that I know of. Until
recently my Roadrunner had port 80 blocked (now its open last time I checked).
I still have the same ip I had 2 years ago since I moved to this house, even
after flushing the modem (they replaced it after it went bad). I know this is
not normal, but even with dynamic ips they don't change it that often, if at
all. You could always use something like <http://www.dyndns.com/services/> for
dynamic ips.

Either way, it was just a thought experiment like "What would you do if you
had this much speed?". Its impractical and risky anyways.

I remember reading when plentyoffish started out he used to host his server in
his home. I think he moved his server to his new office now.

~~~
tmbeihl
From <http://www.hkbn.net/2010/eng/en_service1_1a5.html> Click on Terms and
Conditions

21 Subscriber shall not run any server type application in providing any type
of service to others in any way through the Broadband Service. Such server
type application includes, but not limited to, email server, web server, ftp
server, dhcp server, proxy, usenet news, multi-user interactive forums, irq
and/or multi-user game host. 23\. Only one public IP address is assigned
dynamically to each Subscriber by HKBN for his/her connection to the public
Internet. Such public IP address will be changed from time to time and the
Subscriber is restricted from getting more than one public IP address by any
other means. 24\. Subscriber shall not connect any fixed IP device to HKBN’s
Network 25\. Subscriber shall not use any unofficial system (other than HKBN’s
authorized login system) to connect to HKBN’s Network.

PS. I keep two servers in my closet. But don't tell my ISP

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albahk
As a startup, if you knew each of your customers had 1Gbps access, what could
you do that you can't do now?

~~~
macemoneta
Backups to remote systems. Keep significant data in "the cloud". Stream
content directly from a friend - why upload/download? Distributed cluster
computing / rending farms - make adding FX or fully rendered animation to home
movies near real-time. Redundant distributed storage - eliminate backups
altogether and keep data safe and accessible. 1080p video conferencing /
security monitoring.

Most importantly, probably something we haven't yet thought of.

~~~
albahk
Off-site backup is a good one. If I backup to a NAS on my Gigabit LAN at home,
it should be similar speed to a colo-NAS located within the same datacentre as
the ISP. According to the linked site, you can download a 4.7GB DVD in 38
seconds.

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dailo10
Wow. This makes me hate the U.S. telecom providers even more.

I know it's not a fair comparison considering how spread out the U.S. is, but
still, I'm paying $80 for Internet and phone. Where's all my money going?

~~~
pavs
You answered your own question. Its not a fair comparison.

I am guessing:

\- its more expensive to distribute service when population is spread out over
larger area.

\- There is no genuine competition which keeps the price and service at same
rate year after year.

\- In major cities (like here in NY) there is no prospect of major competition
since cities make long term deals with operators.

\- lack of proper regulation (at present but I know they are working on it),
that encourages operators to provide faster connection and cheaper price.

\- I am 100% speculating here, but I think I remember reading somewhere that
in countries like Korea and cities like HK the operators are heavily
subsidized to provide faster internet connection at lower price. Not sure if
its still true.

~~~
albahk
Hong Kong housing is in large clusters and extremely densely populated. Taking
only three of the large private housing estates (Mei Foo, Taikoo Shing,
Whampoa Gardens) gives you a population of roughly 150,000ppl. So the
providers can be reasonably assured of a large market, although they commonly
use some aggressive sales tactics.

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hyung
There's also typically a big price difference between domestic and
international bandwidth.

From just quickly glancing at the website, the 1Gbps is only for local
servers, and they don't seem to guarantee any international bandwidth.

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bnchdrff
I'm sick of waiting for this in the U.S. How much is it to rent a
microtrencher and wire up my neighborhood with fiber and then lease a
university/municipal network uplink?

~~~
asmithmd1
First you will need a license from your local government -- and they will want
to know what you can do for them.

~~~
chc
I think offering a sweet Internet connection to the whole neighborhood _would_
be the "what you can do for them." Makes it more attractive for people to live
there — and as a bonus, if people are paying their broadband fees to you and
you live locally, it keeps in the money in the local economy, which most
governments like.

~~~
wmf
Providing service to a neighborhood is considered "redlining" because it
discriminates against all the neighborhoods that you don't serve. Thus the
local government will probably require that you serve the entire city/county
or nothing.

~~~
tomjen3
And as a result nobody gets good internet.

Dammit.

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rbanffy
I am not sure my computer can even sustain that kind of data rate.

I have already hosted some low-traffic websites off small-office data plans an
can tell it mostly works. Uptime is not that good and you'll spend some time
on the phone explaining it's their connection and not your server that's down.
In the end, it's not really worth it.

As for effective bandwidth, what most telcos sell is the connection speed to
their first router. Your mileage may vary.

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dhotson
I wonder, if you're downloading a file at this speed, your computer wouldn't
be able to write it to your hard disk fast enough correct?

~~~
wmf
Right. But if you have an SSD it should be fine.

~~~
laut
Not all SSDs are faster than a hard-disk for sequential writes (for instance
writing a big file to disk).

<http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/24>

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jonathanmarcus
So jealous!

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grandalf
Google KS has nothing on that!

