SubscribeHong Kong Broadband Network, the wholly owned subsidiary of City Telecom, has just slashed the price for its 100Mbps “bb100” fiber optic broadband service. When a customer finds a friend willing to sign up, both will receive the broadband service for $13 US per month for 24 months, which represents a 50% discount for each customer.
At this price, Hong Kong residents pay just $0.06/megabit-per-second, which includes a speed guarantee that customers will receive at least 80% of advertised speed when surfing domestic websites.
William Yeung, Chief Executive Officer of HKBN noted that at least 32% of Internet users in Hong Kong suffer from broadband speeds below 10Mbps, and the Hong Kong special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China lags behind Korea and Japan in terms of fiber to the home service, something Yeung would like to see changed.
He considers Hong Kong’s broadband development rating “comfortably enjoying today’s applications” to be inadequate, and wants to see Hong Kong have universal access to 100Mbps or greater speed broadband.
“Being the second largest broadband service provider, we have a duty to improve Hong Kong’s global standings,” Yeung said.
HKBN provides speeds up to 1Gbps in Hong Kong over its fiber optic network. Hong Kong’s broadband ranking is important to the region for economic reasons, attracting new industry and high paying technology jobs with fast, affordable broadband service.
What Hong Kong considers inadequate is still well ahead of the United States, which continues to lag behind several Asian nations in constructing advanced high speed broadband platforms.
Hong Kong’s population density, which poses a challenge for some services, is actually a benefit for telecommunications, because construction costs are lower when wiring densely populated multi-dwelling units and apartments.
The company currently has 391,000 broadband customers, attracted to the company in part by their creative advertising campaigns.
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HKBN Member Get Member Promotion.flv[/flv]
HKBN makes Hong Kong’s population density a net plus for fast, affordable broadband. William Yeung announces “Member Get Member Promotion” from HKBN and unveils new advertising campaign. (3 minutes)
Several weeks ago, Stop the Cap! included several HKBN ads for your review. We’ve now obtained English subtitled copies to share, below the jump.
Here are several advertisements HKBN uses to sell customers on the advantage of fiber optic broadband service, especially in comparison to slow speed DSL service prevalent with Hong Kong’s primary telephone provider. All ads include English subtitles.
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HKBN Ad Hurry Up.mp4[/flv]
Hurry Up! – This ad slams DSL service from the phone company, using a cast of regulars from other HKBN ads.
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HKBN Ad Bell English.mp4[/flv]
Alexander Graham Bell – The inventor of the telephone asks why anyone would want broadband service over a 100 year old telephone network.
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HKBN Ad Thats Ridiculous.mp4[/flv]
That’s Ridiculous! – A follow-up to ‘Hurry Up!’ this ad promotes sign-up gifts available to customers.
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HKBN Ad Pipeline English.mp4[/flv]
Pipeline – A colorful way to illustrate why a slow pipeline for broadband just doesn’t work.
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HKBN Ad Ants English.mp4[/flv]
Ants – An explanation of why having DSL service means a slow upload experience.
The local media will never tell us about this. They’ll just carry the water the next time Frontier and TWC want to increase rates
Now I want to move to Hong Kong, just for better commercials. Better internet would just be a side benefit.
Yep, American ISP’s say there is no demand for higher speeds. Yea ok…
Phillip, come on man, getting your tooth pulled and still can’t publish something??? Damn, this site is going down hill. 🙂
Well, that was hell…. They didn’t pull the tooth… did a root canal and found four different canals in the molar instead of the usual three. It took 90 minutes, seven pain killing shots, a considerable infection which sprayed all over the place when the pulp chamber was opened up (gross!) and a whole bunch of complications from roots that went in all directions. All that for the low low price of $1078, not including the $950 crown replacement. New top notch computer setup with Internet service or one silly tooth… pick. 🙂 They told me to throw the amoxicillin… Read more »
Have to love how no matter how much you try to keep those teeth clean, they’ll always get infected or damaged some how by Bacterium. Well, none the less for that $1k you could buy only a part of my rig here. However, that $1k would buy all of my older gaming hardware which I didn’t trade in as well as an old Trinitron CRT monitor off of me :). This is going on with the used factor vs. current market. And of course, whatever is left over would also give you crazy fast Internet for a month or two… Read more »
Just make sure they don’t charge you metered-billing for the motor brush in the dental drill, metered-billing for the time you sat in the waiting room or try to get you to purchase a 2 year contract to come back to them for all your teeth needs (can only buy toothbrushes and toothpaste, etc from them) during that time….Oh wait…dentists don’t do that just ISPs! Good luck to not having much more done. I hope they would give you gas for stuff like that since it is cheaper, and more effective, unless you are allergic to it or something. Don’t… Read more »
Maybe between all of the teeth clenching and gritting contemplating Frontier and Time Warner overcharging did the real damage. I seem to be doing okay now, and am off to FedEx to get some CricKet RespeKt. 🙂
Guess you never had a root canal. I have had 4. All went bad almost
one year later. What great times. Dentist probably went on vacation
with mine. No more…. at my age just pull it. 🙂
HK BN is one of the WORST providers in Hong Kong. Their DL bandwith to the US and overseas is often under 1 mb speed and upload is 2-3mb.
They offer a 20% speed guarantee which is 20mb out of 100mb but their speeds are nowhere close.
Sometimes even dialup would be faster than this POS 100mb Fibre rubbish by HKBN.