GigE to the Home – Wireless Next?.
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.
Perhaps WiMax/WiBro will eventually deliver it cheaper [Daily Wireless]