Hong Kong: US$13 100 up, 100 down

HKBN_William_Yeung_sportscarNiQ Lai of City Telecom charges $13 for 100 megabits up and down and has great ads featuring a Lamborghini. They offer an 80% speed guarantee for non-international traffic, or 2x your money back. They have no cap or major hidden charges. Similar costs $99 in the U.S., $45 in Britain, and something like $20 in France as part of a bundle, and rarely includes upstream.

With five wired carriers in most HK buildings, they have to be aggressive to gain market share. It's a real standalone offer, although you can add voice ($9) and IPTV ($17) for a triple play under $40. They are profitable with little debt, and have set a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal to become the largest IP service provider in Hong Kong by 2016."

"We make Lamborghini 'SuperCar' class broadband available at mass market prices," Lai writes. The one significant limit is they provision only 20 meg per home of International bandwidth. New customers pay installation of US$39 but no equipment charge. The picture is CEO William Leung with a symbol of the speed of his network.
The substantial majority of their traffic profile is local, with most resources from streaming TV to p2p available locally. Like Iliad and other successful new competitors, they run a simple IP network. GEPON fiber to the building (which is less than $100/connection.) Then a simple Ethernet switch with Cat 5e to each apartment. The switch looks very similar to the 24 port 10/100 Linksys or Netgear that costs less than $150 at local computer stores. This is yet one more confirmation of the major savings of IP networks like those I see at Iliad/Fr. The lower costs provide a major competitive advantage.Some editor's thoughts: William dressed in leather to promote his 100 megabit upstream and downstream service, for $13/month. Repeat: U.S.$13/month, 100 meg up, 100 meg down, no cap and generous terms including an 80% speed guarantee. 1.5M homes in Hong Kong are servable, and another 500K under construction. That's a third the price and much faster than anything available in London, New York, Chicago, or Berlin. Triple play is U.S. $40.

Magic? Crazy stunt of a company trying to avoid bankruptcy? Huge government subsidy? No, just strong competition. An aggressive entrant, already profitable, wants to win customers. Speeds like that are practical across 50-90% of the homes in the developed world. Comcast and Verizon in the U.S. Free.fr and Numericable France, and many others are proving out the technology. France's triple play – including “100 meg down” cable modems and fiber in several cities - is under $50. Of course rural areas are harder, but the gap is far too wide.

Every competent regulator needs to look at the leaders and ask, “How can I come close in my country?” Your move, Julius, Ed, Mathias, and other powerful men.
Written by Dave Burstein


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