Say It with IPTV Services

Tapping the Flexibility of a Converged Network Infrastructure That’s smart. Ask HKBN.

“It’s not what you have that counts, but how you use it,” as the saying goes. Actually, what Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited (HKBN) has is quite impressive—a Carrier Ethernet network capable of delivering 1 Gbit/s to any residence or business. But it’s what the company is doing with the network that earned HKBN the 2005 Global Entrepolis @ Singapore award for innovation, sponsored by the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Singapore Economic Development Board. HKBN is extending 10– and 100–Mbit/s services to all subscribers who want them at considerably lower prices than its competitors; 1–GB service is available for a premium price. And most recently, HKBN has been building a healthy market for IPTV.

A subsidiary of City Telecom (H.K.) Limited, HKBN has grown from 12 employees to Hong Kong’s second largest alternative service provider in a little more than ten years. How? HKBN reaches out to underserved markets, starting with people who have never used broadband, offers them a year’s service free, and then continually introduces new services. By the end of 2005, its network, built at US$130 per home passed, had a reach of approximately 2 million residences, 90 percent of those in the city. Symmetric 100-Mbit/s and 1-Gbit/s services are US$27 and $172 per month, respectively.