If you have recently been frustrated by buffering while watching an HD video-on-demand stream, then hold that thought. For those in the less developed parts of the world, watching HD video at all, is, quite literally, something of a pipe dream. In these countries, for those fortunate enough to be able to move past existential concerns such as food and housing, internet connectivity and bandwidth is still a mere fraction of what those in developed countries are used to. It’s a pain point of which Dileep Agrawal, chief executive of Nepalese ISP WorldLink, and a speaker at the Broadband ip&TV Asia conference in May, is only too aware.

Canadian telco MTS Allstream has deployed optical technology from US firm Ciena in order to upgrade its national optical fibre transmission network to support 100Gbps data transport.