[ejb999]

I don't really see the point - impressed that they offered it, but how many people truly need it?

I have 1G symmetric FTTH internet, the bottleneck is still the services I want to access at the other end - really makes no difference how much faster the pipe is, if the service you are using can't keep up.

Will some people benefit?? sure - a handful of power users doing massive uploads and downloads for commercial purposes... but the typical Netflix watcher or telecommuter really isn't going to benefit at all from from anything faster than about 100MBs up/down right now.

Like I said, I have 1G fiber connection, you know how long it takes me to watch a two hour Netflix movie at 1G speed? Two hours. You know how long that would take me on a 50Mbs connection? 2 hours. You know how long that would take me on a 25Gb connection? 2 hours.

That said, if I could buy a 25 Gb connection at a reasonable price I would.

[exq]

20 years ago you'd have said the same thing about dsl to broadband, and if everyone had that same mentality, Netflix would still be mailing dvds and not offering 4k streaming. Innovation is good.

[laurencerowe]

I think the difference is that 20 years Gbit ethernet was becoming standard issue on desktops while even 10Gbit ethernet is still pretty rare outside of the data centre and switch uplinks today.

25Gbit internet will be great for schools, libraries, and offices with multiple users but it's going to be a while before it becomes relevant for individual homes.

[KennyBlanken]

It's extremely relevant for putting a multifamily / condo / apartment building on the internet.

25Gbit is plenty fast enough to service dozens of units - more than twice the downlink local loop speed DOCSIS4 has, and Comcrap is still on DOCSIS 3.x.

[bitbckt]

10/40Gb hasn't been the standard in data centers in a number of years. My house is entirely 10Gb (save for wireless), in part because older enterprise gear at those speeds is so cheap.

25/50 and 100/400 have supplanted 10/40 in the data center, and 800Gb is here now.

[mciancia]

Well, if cost of hardware on ISP side is fairly similar for 1G, 10G and 25Gbps, then why not offer also the fastest option just because you can?

> if the service you are using can't keep up.

Thats standard chicken and egg problem, why provide faster servers when ISPs are offering 1Gbps at most

IMO internet speed could be like electricity/power - like most people don't care how much power they can get from the grid, in the future we will have the same when it comes to the internet - it will almost always be fast enough for everything

[moistoreos]

/remindme in 10 years

In all seriousness, YES! File sizes are not getting smaller. If the bottleneck of data transference were my hardware, then we would live in a data utopia.

Imagine the size of files for the last 20 years and you could probably do a relatively close comparison for the next 20. I would say they have future-proofed their system for a long while.

I would also say that with the addition of IoT, there is going to be a LOT more casual traffic across the wire in people's homes/businesses.

[lloeki]

> Imagine the size of files for the last 20 years and you could probably do a relatively close comparison for the next 20.

Is it? A some point usefulness plateaus.

I mean taking the streaming example, we can easily stream several 4K HDR streams within a 1G pipe, and 4K is basically retina-class unless you plan to project in a cinema, so anything above is virtually useless (just like the move to 24bit/192kHz is for listening).

The only way I can see this use case growing in size in any semi-useful way is by reducing compression ratio to eliminate artifacts.

Similarly picture size increase but I don't see people start sharing gigapixel pictures.

Maybe this could be an enabler of truly privacy respecting home self-hosting. Own your data, own your services. Maybe distributed storage like ipfs could benefit from that as well.

But size, I can only see us using more of it because we basically now have the ability to be inefficient, not because it's useful.

But hey, 20 years is basically impossible to project into with any reliability.

[Gigachad]

Not sure if we are going to see this in the future, but I'd love to see video streaming / content production move to 60fps. You're right that beyond 4k doesn't really give you anything but the improvement 24fps to 60 is absolutely massive.

Would also be nice to see video call apps upgrade from the absolute worst qualities to something nicer.

[fomine3]

Doubling frame rate won't add bitrate like double, thanks to frame difference compression algorithm. Video call won't use much too. I'd say VR could be the next application that needs more bandwidth.

[ejb999]

I don't disagree - in 10 years this will be different and so will my opinion - things we don't even know about will become common everyday necessities and may require those kind of speeds...but right now, I don't see it.

[themacguffinman]

There's kind of a chicken & egg dynamic here. People won't experiment with futuristic high-bandwidth applications before they have high bandwidth.

[geerlingguy]

That's the maximum, right? I would imagine they have plans from sub-gigabit up to 25G. I know I'd absolutely love the option of 10G for a reasonable price (thousand(s)?). Heck, I'd be overjoyed to get symmetrical 100 Mbps, and I'd gladly pay a few hundred for it.

Meanwhile my Dad has 500/500 AT&T Fiber, and he pays half what I pay for 930/35 Charter Spectrum cable :(

[thfuran]

Thousands? Why not more like $40/mo, like several cities in Europe where 10G is already offered?

[alexdumitru]

Thousands? In Romania you can get 10G for just a bit over $10. 1G is $8 and 500M is $6.

[bitbckt]

I have 10Gb symmetrical to the home in the Bay Area for ~$40/mo. Thousands? Really?

[geerlingguy]

I'm just judging by my current ISP options... Spectrum and AT&T. Scaling up the price it's be at least $1k/month for 10G.

I wish I lived in whatever dream land has actual first-world internet access :)

[CyberDildonics]

This same ISP offered 10 gigabit for $400 seven years ago.

[dale_glass]

At this point it's not so much about normal usage as the outliers.

For instance work from home got more popular. Say you have to transfer disk images. It's a lot more pleasant to transfer a couple TB at 25 Gb. You probably won't need that every day, but when you do need it, it's very nice not to have to wait hours or days for it to get through.

[nothis]

The way I see it is that by raising the bar like this, you're making more realistic speeds for average users a) more stable/common and b) less expensive.

[shepherdjerred]

> I don't really see the point - impressed that they offered it, but how many people truly need it?

Can you imagine the types of applications this would enable if everyone had a 25gbps connection?

An Xbox could have a 200GB hard drive. Want to play a different game? Just wait a few seconds, we'll download the latest 150GB Call of Duty.

[lotsofpulp]

More important is high quality high upload bandwidth not hidden behind CGNAT. We could actually move away from having to depend on Microsoft/Apple/Google/Amazon servers to host and deliver personal content.

[Shank]

> I have 1G symmetric FTTH internet, the bottleneck is still the services I want to access at the other end - really makes no difference how much faster the pipe is, if the service you are using can't keep up.

I can definitely hit this with one Steam download. If any more users want to download games, they can easily compete for 1G.

Netflix and other services have relatively low bitrate streams too. If I could get higher quality / higher bitrate streams, I’d prefer that over what most streaming services offer too.

I think it’s easy to think things are good enough without looking too deep into the details. You’re used to 1G. But a lot of people are used to a lot more and a lot less.

[ejb999]

>>You’re used to 1G. But a lot of people are used to a lot more and a lot less.

Trust me, I am not used to it (at least not yet)- I have only had it for 5+ months - I have been WFH for more than 25 years and only had access to 3Mbs DSL before this.

[oyashirochama]

Ive hit 5gbps at my dorm room, I had upto 10gbps only issue it was shared with the entire base and at the time only had 2 10gbps trunks out of the ISP. They later upgraded to 2 40gbps from NTT.

[xxpor]

60 mbit 4k (same as bluray) would be sick

[digitallyfree]

There are places like Switzerland where you actually can get a 25Gbps residental connection for a reasonable price. The actual cost lies in your backend infrastructure and the skills you need to use it (it's all enterprise equipment at that level). Everything from the routing to the switching to the servers that you're likely running on that connection can get real expensive.

[yakkityyak]

Internet is like ram. You can never have too much.

[netr0ute]

> how many people truly need it?

56kbps ought to be enough for anyone

[noizejoy]

I’d love to have 25 Gbps for residential - even if just for offsite backups.