Need for speed: how does 1Gbit/s broadband grab you?

Sometimes I really love living in the English countryside. The fresh air, the sheep and horses at the bottom of the garden, the lack of crime, the sense of community that still exists in a small village, the lack of seriously fast broadband. Ah, yes, that's not so good is it?

In fact, most of the time the relatively slow broadband speed I get here is pretty much the only reason I have to wish I were living back in London. Well, that and numerous restaurants covering all cuisines, the public transport system and the night life if I am being honest.

However, some news has just popped my way which makes me feel much happier about the 2Mbit/s speeds that I currently enjoy, compared to those city slickers who in some cases can get a cable driven 20Mbit/s or faster. That news being that in Japan some outfit has just launched a 1Gbit/s broadband service. That pretty much puts London, and just about everywhere else, in its place.

Certainly it is much faster than the 100Mbit/s through the sewers service proposed for Scotland, and the UK will have to wait a while for fibre to arrive as we reported earlier.

Of course, a gigabit-class fibre based broadband service is something to slobber over, and I have been dribbling just a tad ever since hearing about it. The lucky Japanese will be able to enjoy that crazy Internet connection from October 1st courtesy of the KDDI telco. The Kiari One Home Gigabit service will cost just UKP £28 per month which is actually cheaper than the 100Mbit/s service currently being offered there.

The real question is, I guess, what would you do with all that speed? Well, apart from the obvious TV over IP application, and the ability to stream some seriously high quality video around the place, I am not sure what the answer is.

Any thoughts as to what you would use a 1Gbit/s connection for?

[scru]

Well, give a guy a 1Gbit/s connection and you can only expect 1 thing.

[ry4n]

Well I know what 90% of Japan is going to do with its speed, flood US based servers just to prove how awesome they are at video game, even though everybody already knows. I just have a feeling that they will get to brag about it even more now :(.........cries over local puny dsl

[Diguelo]

Like you, I too live out in the countryside of England, except Im on the seriously flat bit on the East of England. Currently Im only able to get just over 1.2Mb/sec download speed and less than 400K upload too, due I am told to the distance from the exchange. I would love a 1GB line for a number of reasons.

Think about it, what is the main reason for internet clogging, its because of the amount of downloads being done, from web pages to music, video to mass data transfers. Each action done by everyone on the net adds to the download traffic across the whole thing. So my thinking is this, if all these downloads can be done as fast as is possible using this new fibre system then the whole net can benefit with reduced peak traffic loads.

I used to work for a company that insisted on sending me a 500MB file every other night to keep my laptop database up to date. The transfer used to take most of the evening and through the night too. Im sure I am not alone in having to do this on a regular basis. Nor would I be alone in having to share the internet today with their children. My home network has 3 PC`s mine which is the usual browse the net, play the odd game over the net, chat to mates on Wilco or Team Speak. Then the kids, <<SCREAMS>> last night my daughter had 3 Instant messenger programs runnning with at least a dozen webcam feeds coming in, like she even looks at the screen occasionally. My son tends to spend his time browsing the browser games sites or reading about Dinosaurs or Doctor Who. So the 1GB may, unless my daughter feels she then needs to have 100 webcam feeds coming in, give me some capability to use the net.

I would love and welcome a 1GB service, but I have little doubt in my mind that the last place on earth to get it will of course be the exchange down the road from me. When they switched to broadband, it took 4 years of whining at my ISP to get them to instruct BT to install it on our exchange. Ill start preparing the petitions now and look forward to christmas 2015 when someone may actually install fibre internet out here.

Dig

[Thinka]

Less griping about speeds in shared accomodation, faster (and therefore more effective) video streaming, better remote connections... bring on the Giga-band!!!