[bb88]

They basically did at some point about a decade or so ago maybe. Wimax and LTE were taking off at that time. Then about 2 years ago, Google woke up and started pushing fiber again.

It's clear now that high speed fiber is the future. Cable companies aren't upgrading their networks anymore. It's unclear if the wireless companies will be able to support 10gig service. And the single mode fiber laid into the ground a decade or more ago has only increased in value.

[adgjlsfhk1]

is there any desire for residential 10g service? it's pretty hard to image how 90% of families would use up 200meg

[Schnitz]

Ever download a 100GB game? The 5x speed increase from 200mbit to 1gbit is significant. Most families have kids that game.

[vel0city]

I'm actually downloading one right now off Steam, and I'm limited more by IOPS on the drive I'm installing to than I am my internet speed due to the compression/encryption/unpacking. Not even using much more than 100Mbits consistently here, but I am installing to a microSD on a gaming handheld. But devices like this are getting more popular especially for a multi-kid household.

But even then, it's not something most people are constantly doing. Maybe a couple of times a month.

I'd still probably go with more than 200Mbit for a family, but knowing how many of the families I know use their home internet they're rarely coming even close to routinely maxing out a 500Mbit connection even with several kids.

[bb88]

That's kinda like saying back in the 1990's that 90% of families wouldn't use more than 56.6k.

Well, because that's all they had access to.

[vel0city]

No, a single user would routinely max out their dial-up connection just doing normal browsing things. Even just pulling a lot of email from a pop endpoint could max out that connection. Browsing web pages with graphics would absolutely crush a dial up connection. Some places tried to do things like handle video over such a connection, but it was pretty painful and pretty much useless. Streaming a song was pretty pointless.

These days a 200Mbit connection would handle five or so users doom scrolling social media with videos and images while a few TVs play 4K streaming media while smart home devices chirp home all the secrets in the house and the door bell cam uploads a few clips every hour and the Sonos is playing a few different songs in a few different zones throughout the house for ambiance.

[bb88]

> These days a 200Mbit connection would handle five or so users doom scrolling social media

Is that because all you can do is doom scroll on an internet connection, or are there higher bandwidth possibilities waiting for 10gig home internet service to arrive?

To some extent making that argument is like Bill Gates saying "All anyone will ever need is 640k."

[vel0city]

Tons of households (even in the US) have access to 1G+ home internet connectivity and yet that seems to be most of what their usage is.

According to the FCC, in December 2023 something like 79% of all households had at least 100Mbit fixed internet, ~24% had 940Mbit or better. The NCTA claims 91% have access to gigabit or better. I do agree they're probably overselling that number (cable companies maps are often trash), but it wouldn't surprise me if it was really something more like 80% or more have some kind of access to gigabit but might just be cost prohibitive for what they care to spend.

https://www.fcc.gov/internet-access-services-reports

https://www.ncta.com/industry-data/91-of-us-homes-have-acces...

If these households aren't even really utilizing their gigabit connections very much today, what makes you think they're just waiting for 10 gigabit connectivity? What applications would they even really do with 10gig connectivity with hardware they'll have in the next five years, something normies would really care to do?

By and large people don't even care that much about 4K or ultra-high-quality video streaming. The two most popular Netflix plans are Standard and Standard with Ads. Blu-Rays are dead. VR acceptance is still pretty slow.

Even something like cloud gaming is really only using like 40-60Mbit of throughput for even a 4K gaming stream. Quadruple it, we're at 240Mbit. And even if we did ship 10gig home internet, it's not like we're just going to stop compressing the stream; a 4K 120Hz HDR stream is going to be ~32Gbit. Average household size in the US is about 3.23, so all three and a third people could be using 240Mbit and still have another 280Mbit of throughput.

Don't get me wrong, some percentage of home users would use a multi-gig home internet connection. But even though I can subscribe to a 5gig internet package and I'm more on the enthusiast end of things with a family with multiple kids and several 6E AP's with wired backhaul, hosting multiple applications and SDRs from my home, it's just not worth it to me to bother paying for it over the gigabit plan. Even if it was only $10/mo more I probably wouldn't jump to the higher plan. It wouldn't change my access or usage at all while costing another $120/yr.

Sell me on a 10gig home internet plan over a 1gig home internet plan. How is it going to radically change my usage with the kind of hardware most consumers actually buy and use? For that matter, sell me on a 1gig plan over a 500Mbit plan for a typical US household, let's say two adults and two teenage-ish kids. Would they really even see much of a difference in their day to day lives?

Back in the 90s it was pretty obvious what could be unlocked by having an always on multi-megabit internet connection over a single dial up connection for a household. It was just very prohibitively expensive for most people. I wouldn't say its anywhere near as obvious what benefits are to be had for a household today to jump from 500Mbit to 1gig or especially 1gig to 10gig.