1Gbps Symmetrical Home Broadband for $26 per mth (in Hong Kong)
hkbn.net
hkbn.net
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.)
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.
A proper data centre provides many benefits though. Two big ones (excluding security) are redundant networks and power. A good UPS would probably suffice for power though. I think I would try it with a hobby site or two, but nothing critical.
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...
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.
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
Most importantly, probably something we haven't yet thought of.
It's hard to think about, at least when I'm paying 28 US$ for "up to" 1.5M/364Kbps. The way I'm looking at it, much of the future won't be invented in the US.
This would be awesome for a lot of home users who wouldn't have to worry about virusses, spyware, etc. It would be awesome for developers because we can ensure that the servers have runtimes for all the scripting languages available and we could make it easy to test your program to make sure it works, since there is only one configuration.
And whomever provide this service would be able to charge a commision fee for selling the software, plus getting money from storage, etc.
I really would love to do this, so if anybody works at an ISP, please get the users some additional bandwidth.
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?
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.
From just quickly glancing at the website, the 1Gbps is only for local servers, and they don't seem to guarantee any international bandwidth.
Dammit.
At two dollar per Mbps oversubscribed 100 times is $20 for each user/month, sell the service at $70 month, and you should have enough to turn a profit, pay back the investment and keep the thing operating.
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.