Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 11:52 pm Post subject: Broadband 2.0 (160MB to 1GB Internet Speed!!!)
Article from Digital Life, Straights Times Singapore.
GET READY for BROADBAND 2.0
In the past month, telecoms operators have talked up plans of how they want to build this new network, dubbed the Next Generation National Broadband Network (NGNBN).
Announced last year, it will let users zip data over the Net at 1Gbps, or at leats 10 times faster than now.
The 12 bidders that are competing to build this government-funded network have been shifting into gear of late, with a handful of frontrunner's already readying the technologies that will be used in future.
While current high-speed technologies hook up homes using a phone line or a cable point, future "BROADBAND 2.0" technologies are likely to turn to fibre-optic cables.
Using light instead of electrical pulses to transmit data, fiber optics can offer almost infinite speed boosts.
At a demo in Hong Kong last month, one of the contenders to build Singapore's lightning-fast broadband network Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN), showed a 1Gbps link that downloaded a Saving Private Ryan DVD movie in under a minute.
The fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) demo at a public apartment at Kwai Shing East Estate was meant to show off the advanced broadband technologies in Hong Kong - something that could bge replicated in Singapore.
If HKBN wins its bid, its executive said, Singapore would have a new network to fierce Hong Kong market, said: "If you use the technology from incumbents, you are using the same technology that has been around for the past 20 years."
Facing a fight on home ground, Singapore's incumbent telcos are not sitting idle either.
Singtel also has plans to wire up homes with fibre-optics cables, but is waiting to see how the government tender turns out. StarHub, meanwhile, has said its current cable modem technology can be upgraded to offer 1Gbps in future.
The Government will formally call for proposals for the next-gen network by December and announce the winning bid next year.
But while plans for the cyber-highway are in the works, few people know for sure what the high speeds will be used for.
In Hong Kong, peer-to-peer downloads of movies and songs are filling up the data pipes on HKBN's speedy service.
In Japan, telcos like NTT have signed up heavy Internet users, like gamers wanting to be a split-second faster than opponents in a hack-and-slash game.
The telecoms giant is also developing a commercial fibre-optic network that will let Japan's small-town doctors send cell slides, X-rays and other medical data to city hospitals, according to a New York Times report this month.
But in Singapore, the old issue of content - or the lack of it - still lingers over its ambitious next-gen broadband project.
Without a large market to attract content players like YouTube and Blazzard - the creator of the popular World of Warcraft game here, will Singapore users continue surfing overseas, bypassing the super-fast highway here?
This is possible, say experts. But they add that BROADBAND 2.0 will bring changes tha will ultimately benefit Singapore. For example, the Republic will keep pace with economic rivals like Hong Kong, in its bid to be the region's financial centre.
Mr. Foong King Yew, a research director at consultancy firm Gartner, said that the new network will also force telcos to offer better services, like pay-TV, instead of competing on speeds alone.
The killer app may be e-learning, peer-to peer downloads or remote- medicine, he suggested, adding that these will not een begin to fill the enormous capacity the netwrok is capable of.
YOu can, if you are in HOng Kong and using a new service there.
Such a feat is what Hong Kong broadband users will get to do when they subscribe to a 1Gbps Metro-Ethernet or Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) service there.
At a demo of a FTTH service last month, Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) staff downloaded the Saving Private Ryan movie at a mind-boggling rate of 58.3MB per seconds. That means the 2.65GB movie took under a minute to download.
NExt to this PC, a machine linked to a modest 6Mbps asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) modem got only 621KB per second Speeds.
BOt hPCs were placed side by side in an average HOng Kong public apartment for a "real world" test.
It was clear whihc the Ferrari was and which the Proton - the FTTH link was more than 90 times faster in terms of throughput.
Upload speeds were fast too. Unlike ADSL, Metro-E and FTTH allow speedy uploads as well as downloads, - great for the P2p or peer-to-peer crowd, the folk who zip load of files across the Internet.
The blazing fast up- and down-links are the reason why HKBN, whic offers FTTH from HK$378(SGD$72/RM165.50) a month for a 100Mbps link to HK$1680 ($320/RM736) for a 1Gbps link, can sell some of its value-add services.
It has a pay-TV line up that includes the National Geographic channel. And a service called bb b ox lets users upload holiday pictures and videos so others on the same HKBN network can easily view them on their TV set.
At the same time, a bb drive service lets people upload their PowerPoint or other files for backup on a network drive. No complicated task to do here - only a drive that is accessible directly on the desktop.
The applications are only possible because of the high-speed access offered by Metro-E and FTTH - considerable upgrades over ageing ADSL technology.
This is a fact not lost on HKBN chairman Ricky WOng, who says Singapore needs the same cyber highways to overcome a lack of Internet content here (70 t0 80 percent of Singapore's traffic heads overseas).
While others wait for the traffic before building the highway, he advocates building the roads first so the cars will come.
He has done exactly that in Hong Kong , shaking up the market in the past few years, since launching a 1Gbps service to homes.
Starhub, was lucky to have build a rather modern cable network called a hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) network.
As its name suggests, both copper and fibre-optic cables are used to bring both cable TV channels and cable modem services to homes.
Unlike old coper phone cables, the technology's proponents stress, HFC can provide faster speeds in future.
The "magic" to do this? Channel bonding, which combines several "channels" in the bandwidth available over the cables, leading to faster speeds. This is smilar to opening up several more lanes of a highway, letting more traffic through.
And the standard, Docsis 3.0 - an upgrade over the current Docsis 2.0 used in Starhub's older modems - requires current users to buy new cable modems.
For now, the tecnology has enable StarHub to win the broadband speed war here., by offering speeds of up to 100Mbps - the fastest now. It has readied the technlogy for an 160MBps service and claims it can hit 1Gbps in future.
i am already using Starhub cable modem at 6MB.. (lowest speed).. download of files from microsoft website or download.com speed is around 500kb/s....through wireless router... not cable connection.
Gosh!!!Reading all these just makes me wanna pack my bags and move to HK or Singapore.Here in Malaysia we are struggling with our underperforming 1Mbps internet connection while our neighbours are enjoying faster and faster internet speed.It feels like we are crawling on our diapers and forking out lots of money in the process too!!! _________________ "Outdo yourself"
okay.. i found the newspaper for the article in a dustbin in my office.... search few days liao...
SPEEDY INTERNET2 gets speed boost.
It's 10 times faster now. Imagine downloading a high-res version of The Matrix movie in just seconds.
NEW YORK- The ultra-high-speed Internet2 network just got 10 times faster, partly in anticipation of rising demand for capacity after the world's largest particle collider opens near Geneva next year.
Until recently, the Internet2 had a theoretical limit of 10gigabits per second, which is thousands of times faster than standard home broadband connections. By sending data using 10 different colours, or wavelengths, of light over a single cable, operators are boosting the network's capacity to 100Gbps.
That means a high-quality version of the movie The Matrix could be sent in a few seconds, rather than half a minute over the old Internet2, and serveral hours over a typical home broadband line.
The new Internet2 network was largely completed in late August, and its operators this week made it possible for researchers to temporarily grab an entire 10Gbps chunk for specific applications, so that they do not slow down normal Internet operations.
"It's now possible for a single computer to have a 10gigabit connection and we needed to have a way of making sure that those kinds of demanding applications could be served at the same time as all the normal uses," said Mr Doug Van Houweling, Internet2's chief executive.
The Internet 2 network, run by level 3 communications, parallels the regular Internet to let universities, corporations, and researchers share large amounts of information in real time. An institution typically has one 10Gbps connection to the 100Gbps Internet 2 backbone for normal Internet usage, along with a second 10Gbps connection it can tap on demand for specific needs, Mr Van Houweling said.
Physicist will likely be among the first to use that on-demand capability, Mr Van Houweling said, when the US$1.8Billion (S$2.7 billion) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research begins operations, now scheduled for next May.
"There wil be thousands of physicists who will all need to access the data coming out of the LHC," he said.
Internet 2 is already planning future expansion. By adding certain equipment, Mr Van Houweling said, the network can easily boost capacity another fourfold to 400Gbps - something likely to begin in 12 to 18 months.
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