[mikequinlan]

4K TV (from Netflix) recommends 25Mbps for each stream. I know that this isn't 100Mbps but Netflix supports streaming to 4 devices at once (with the premium account). You also have to allow for other simultaneous usages (your kids playing games while you are streaming video, etc.).

This doesn't answer the question of what 10Gbps would be used for, but there are at least some applications today that use a significant portion of 100Mbps bandwidth. This is just speculation on my part, but history suggests that once 10Gbps is available inventive people will find a use for that bandwidth.

[MaxBarraclough]

The counterpoint to this is that once you've got enough bandwidth (and low latency) to stream an interactive session with negligible quality issues, you can move anything that requires more bandwidth offsite ('the cloud') and just stream the audio/video output.

As things stand though, it's as kortilla says: we don't even have any such bandwidth-intensive applications in the home. 4k video streaming is the most bandwidth-intensive problem we have. 10gbps may improve download rates for large archives, like modern games or perhaps major OS updates, but that doesn't strike me as a very compelling selling-point. It's a relatively rare occurrence, and reducing the download time by an hour (say) isn't worth reworking your Internet infrastructure. Even here, there's no gain if the Internet connection speed exceeds the write-speed of your storage hardware.

edit It's not quite the same, but I think 5G faces a similar problem. What's the point? 4G is more than enough to stream video. The biggest issue with 4G isn't the bandwidth, or the latency, but the coverage, and I don't think 5G is going to help there. (There are still parts of central London without reliable 4G coverage.)

[anongraddebt]

There could be some semantic issues here. It would seem that a non-trivial number of people have a connection where the actual speed differs a decent amount from the stated/expected. This has certainly been my case after living in L.A. and Chicago.

Perhaps the previous commenter perceives a 10gbps connection as the speed of an actual, say, 5gbps connection.

[MaxBarraclough]

I don't see your point here. For the purposes of our conversation, 5gbps and 10gbps are just the same; they're far in excess of 25mbps. Dishonest ISPs are another topic entirely.

[mikequinlan]

I don't want to belabor this, but you are saying "all applications that I can think of can be implemented using existing bandwidth". I am saying that clever people will invent new applications, ones that no one has thought of yet (or that no one thinks is practical), once the bandwidth is available.

[kortilla]

But the bandwidth is available and it’s not being utilized.