Converged Digest reports that Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) officially launched its 1 Gbps symmetric service for the residential market. Yes,”GigE”.

It’s 1,000 times faster than most DSL service in the United States.

Approximately 800,000 households, out of a total of 2.2 million households in Hong Kong, are wired to receive the service. The 1 Gbps symmetric service is priced at US$215 per month. HKBN noted that its 1 Gbps service is up to 166x faster downstream and 1,950x faster upstream than the advertised bandwidth of the incumbent’s ADSL service.

The 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.

• HKBN is installing more than 10,000 Cisco Catalyst LAN switches and more than 800 Cisco routers in buildings throughout Hong Kong.

• Category 5e copper cables are wired from the LAN switch cabinet to the apartments of each target customer.

• Fiber-to-the-building (FTTB) was deployed between the buildings using the CiscoONS 15454 Multiservice Transport Platform (MSTP) and Cisco Catalyst 4507R Switches.

Hong Kong Broadband Network is using a Cisco Optical Core. The deployment includes the Cisco ONS 15454 SONET/SDH Multiservice Provisioning Platform (MSPP); Cisco Catalyst 6500, Catalyst 4500, Catalyst 3500 and Catalyst 2950 series switches; and Cisco 2600XM Series routers.

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 GigE fiber 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.

A Hong Kong cellular provider (right), delivers a wide range of video information and multimedia content via a dual-camera Nokia 6680 3G/EDGE video phone. News, Finance and Entertainment channels provide dozens of choices.

WiMax/WiBro might deliver it cheaper.

Meanwhile in Singapore, Starhub is offering a 25 Megabits per second broadband TV. i.View provides channels like CNN, E! and Fashion TV direct to computers.

Foreign Affairs magazine has a long article by Thomas Bleha entitled “Down to the Wire” which explains why Asia is leading the broadband world and why America’s lag in broadband deployment will cost it dearly.

The IEEE says what’s needed in the United States is a national fiber-optic “foundation” and a wireless “roof”. The United States should deploy widespread wired and wireless gigabit networks as a national priority, the report says (pdf, above). Larry Smarr’s OptIPuter provides modeling for the subduction zone earthquake that will cause billions in damage. You can take that to the bank.

We know things are bad in the United States. Worse than bad.

SBC will be providing Fiber to the Node (not the home). Once to the node about 500 homes will be served via existing twisted copper via VDSL. SBC says it will provide 6 Mbit/s to 8 Mbit/s per HD channel using either Microsoft’s VC-1 or MPEG-4.

Verizon’s FIOS may run fiber to the home, then distributes video via coax around the house. SBC does IP-TV, Verizon is essentially digital cable. Verizon is building video networks based on cable TV not IP. How smart is that? Fios TV’s fiber-to-the-premises service is scheduled to begin later this year. Internet connections at 30 Mbps cost $199.95 - that’s a long ways from 1,000 Mbps. Verizon plans to bring fiber to 6 million of the United States’ 115 million households. So what!

After the $1K-3K cost per home is amortized, FTTH may be a gold-plated, walled prison for suburban America. Too expensive. Too restrictive. Yet Dark Fiber abounds.

Fiber’s primary advantage may be political; RBOC’s can shut out CLEC competition. Equal access provisions don’t apply. RBOCs can charge anything they want for “last mile” access to fiber. One ISP runs it. Like cable.

Looks like competition — smells like a duopoly.

Akimbo’s $200 settop box features free and pay IP-TV programming. Video search is moving towards video downloads. Can Verizon effectively shut them out? No. But you have to pay the gatekeeper first.

Yipes has interconnected its metro Ethernet pipes using its MPLS-enable backbone to offer national and global area network services.

Would wireless GigE service be possible in the United States? Maybe not today. But wireless 10 Mbps can be delivered. Right here. Right now.

A 15db, bi-directional mine antenna (right), might provide extended street coverage for low-cost community LAN projects. Perhaps a solar-powered WiFi node running a $400 open source 200 mW Metrix box (or a couple of 802.11g APs at 50 Mbps), could deliver four, 2.4 GHz beams for the price of two. Put them on street corners for $1000 a pop.

Could community hubs (on school and community center rooftops), feed a dozen hot-spot street corners? Sure. A commercial system that resembles WiMax backhaul might utilize one Proxim 5GHz, PMP 5054-R base station ($900) bridging 1-2 miles to backbone half a dozen subscriber units ($750). The bridges feed Orinoco AP 4000 APs with dual WiFi cards($500). Add two bi-directional street antennas ($250) for two block coverage in each direction. One every four blocks. Figure $2K a pop. Another $500 for solar-power. Proxim’s bundle with one “pre-WiMax” base station and 6 clients costs $7,000. It works in Umatilla.

Could an inexpensive (pre-WiMax) hub plug into a music/video/Asterisk server and link to a streaming IP-TV satellite feed?

Why not.

Why not deliver 10 Mbps broadband for $16/month? Like Hong Kong. Like Japan. Like Korea and much of Asia. With an educational component. With a social component. With entertainment. Brewster Kahle says it best: “Universal Access to All Human Knowledge”. He delivers. Personal Telco is building a Free Cloud in Portland.

Is $1/month per Mbps in 5 years a wild fantasy? Fujitsu believes that by 2010, multi-band, multi-mode handsets supporting 3G, WiMax and Wi-Fi will become the norm. How much does WiFi cost you now?

Consider these developments:

• Mobilize video is coming. TI’s Hollywood chip supports the DVB-H and ISDB (European & Japanese handheld tv standards). CrownCastle plans 1.6 Ghz service using DVB-H with dozens of mobilized tv channels. Meanwhile, Qualcomm plan to spend $800 million on a proprietary mobile-TV broadcast service at 700-MHz (channel 55). Called MediaFLO, it will aggregate content from cable, terrestrial and satellite TV to offer “50 to 100 national and local channels” by 2006.

• GigaBeam, a wireless 1 Gbps radio backbone using 70 GHz, and ADAPTIX, a WiMax and WiBro compatible company, have joined forces to co-market their complementary product lines for 802.16e-like mobile broadband. GigaBeam provides the 1-10 Gbps wireless backbone. South Korea s wireless broadband project is expected to cost $784 million to $900 million and provide ubiquitous broadband wireless. Korean officials expects the nomadic WiBro service will attract up to 9.3 million subscribers over six years after the licensed 2.3 GHz commercial service begins in Korea in 2006. SK Telecom, has a 1.1% equity stake in Flarion but it looks like WiBro is going to be it.

• MILTON (Microwave Light Organized Network), might be the most intriguing solution for inexpensive broadband. The wireless technology developed in Canada, hopes to provide a cheap, last-mile access solution. One MILTON node, they claim, can have as many as 32 focused beam “petals”, each delivering some 50 Mbps. The unit can pump out over 1 Gbps using the unlicensed 5 Ghz band.

The Milton system is a cognitive radio network that mines spectrum to provide cost-efficient telecommunications services at bi-directional, high data transfer rates. This technology aims to provide residential homes and businesses with broadband wireless Internet service, whether they are in an urban or suburban area.

MILTON will take broadband Internet from a central fiber optic cable and distribute it across several miles through a wireless antenna network. They will provide a WiMax-enabled MILTON platform for New Delhi, India.

India’s Center for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) and Canada’s Communication Research Center have signed an agreement to develop MILTON for cheap, fast, last-mile access. It should deliver 24 beams of 25Mbps WiMax more than a mile, through heavy foliage. Spectrum hogs? Forgetaboutem. VOD for everyone.

They plan to move the proprietary elements of the design to 802.11a and 802.16-2004 standards. WiMAX chipmaker Wavesat will take a key role in the MILTON project.

Wavesat’s Evolutive DM256 is also used in nex-G’s WiMax clients (right) and nex-G’s basestations in the unlicensed 5.8 GHz band. Wavesat also plans an ungrade path from fixed to mobility.

The MILTON network, characterized as “cognitive”, has the capability to sense the radio environment for interference and identify poor quality radio links. Having sensed the environment it changes its own signal transmission characteristics in a manner that improves poorly performing links and mitigates interference.

Designed to be a low cost commodity wireless radio network, it uses the license-exempt bands that operate at 5 Gigahertz.

A 24 beam MILTON might replace twisted pair, coax and fiber. The infrastructure is mostly (free) air.

DailyWireless has more on The Free Triple Play.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Friday, April 22nd, 2005 at 3:52 am.