The speed limits on Hong Kong's information superhighway are rising, with some of the city's big telecommunications players rolling out faster networks and more services linked to optical fibre cables.
PCCW, the city's largest broadband provider, aims to offer various high-speed bandwidth applications, including high-definition television, following the launch of its 1,000-megabits-per-second residential service.
With PCCW's aggressive move to faster broadband services, rival i-Cable Communications is studying plans to further upgrade its cable network infrastructure.
PCCW last week unveiled Netvigator Fibre Direct, an optical fibre broadband service, to residential customers with transmission speeds of between 100 and 1,000 megabits per second. It will charge users between HK$588 and HK$2,188 per month.
PCCW offers a slower broadband service over existing copper telephone lines, based on a technology called asymmetrical digital subscribers line (ADSL).
The new optical fibre service will be bundled with free high-definition television subscriptions, waiving the monthly set-top-box rental and subscription tariff for VOOM, its high-definition television channel.
'We have invested in the optical fibre network for 25 years in Hong Kong and it is the right time now to launch the fibre direct service,' said PCCW group managing director Alex Arena. 'We have so many optical fibres in Hong Kong and are ready to offer the service to most of our users.'