A New Take On ‘Big Fat Dumb Pipes’

Now here’s something you don’t hear every day: Hong Kong Broadband Network, a wholly owned subsidiary of City Telecom (HK) Limited, says it’s proud to be a “big, fat, dumb pipe” provider.

The operator claims to handle average bandwidth consumption of more than 100GB/month per user across its 600,000-plus FTTH/B customer base, noting 100GB “is enough data to overflow the memory of 6 brand new Apple 16GB 4S iPhones every month.” It also compares with the 5GB/month "fair usage" cap whereby wireless carriers in Hong Kong typically start to limit throughput in their unlimited data plans.??

"At HKBN, we embrace over-the-top (OTT) content providers who help fill up our excessively big, fat, dumb pipes. We happily co-exist with OTT providers, as together we create value for our customers,” crows CTO Lo Sui Lun. “Our superior bandwidth capability is the ‘legal unfair competitive advantage’ that drives our industry-leading 17.5-percent return on equity.” ?