The Beijing branch of the China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC) established a Gigaband model community for its gigabit network access on Sunday. Now, residents in this neighborhood can experience gigabit broadband firsthand. Other communities will also have access to it after Beijing completes its establishment of model communities.

This is not the first time Gigaband was launched in China. The country’s three major telecom service operators have all kicked off the gigabit network access in pilot areas since the second half of last year.

China Unicom, one of the country's three main telecom operators, announced at the end of last month to build pilot Gigaband areas in 15 domestic cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin, and would launch further promotion plans according to the results seen in these pilot areas.

China Telecom, another major telecom operator, as well as the largest fixed-line broadband operator in China, started its gigabit network access work as early as last year. Its Shanghai branch officially released a large-scale Gigaband development plan on October 21 2016, aiming to finish the broadband access to 269 communities by the end of 2016 and cover the whole city in 2018. Its Hefei and Wuhu branches in eastern China’s Anhui Province started to deliver Gigaband access to families on October 28, 2016. Pilot construction work has also been launched in several areas like Fujian and Henan provinces and the city of Tangshan in Hebei Province by China Telecom.

The gigabit network will provide families with ultrafast broadband access whose downstream bandwidth can achieve 1G, according to the Beijing branch of China Mobile. Now, if users want to download an 8G Blu-ray video, it will take only 65 seconds with Gigaband, compared to 10 minutes with 100M broadband.

The gigabit network has grasped many customers’ attention under its advertising campaign. However, when asked if they were willing to use Gigaband at home in a random interview by Beijing Business Today, some consumers gave a negative answer mainly due to its high price as their demands, including shopping online, browsing social networking sites and watching movies, could be almost met with current broadband.

Xiang Ligang, a senior specialist on communications forecasts that the Gigaband might gain wide popularity in China after 2023. “The main products the operators are promoting this year remain 100M and 200M broadband, and 300M for next year. 500M broadband will be expected in 2020. It is a gradual process.”