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Virgin Media tests 8Gbps broadband
A handful of homes in Cambridgeshire [UK] have tested broadband speeds of 8Gbps, as part of a trial by Virgin Media.
Currently only eight households, in the village of Papworth, are involved in the trial but Virgin Media hopes to extend this to 50 over time.
The technology it uses, ethernet passive optical network, offers the same speeds for downloads and uploads.
One analyst said it was important that fibre operators future-proofed networks and ensured there was enough capacity.
[...] "With the volume of our customers' internet usage almost doubling every year, trials like this will ensure we have the capability to meet the demand of data-hungry services in the future - be that over cable or full fibre," said Richard Sinclair, executive director of connectivity at Virgin Media.
He added that the trial was aiming to look ahead "to the next decade and beyond".
[...] Virgin Media's network in the UK currently passes more than 14 million premises, using a combination of cable and fibre-optic.
The company has been criticised by some for failing to address the digital divide and concentrating its network in more profitable towns and cities, rather than extending it out to more rural areas.
Last year, it teamed up with Need4Speed to roll out ultra-fast services to 4,000 premises in the Test Valley, in Hampshire, but has admitted it is unlikely to reach very rural areas.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 06 2019, @07:54PM (2 children)
The Vice article has a guy who started out with 1 Gbps and moved to 10 Gbps. He said his family managed to max out the 1 Gbps connection with stuff like 4K streaming on multiple displays while at the same time he would use it to receive and review 3D mammograms (ascended level internet porn) for his job.
There is probably an unknown factor here. As in if the majority of the country started switching to 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps connections, you would start to see use cases pop up that you hadn't thought of. Or you'll just have a really fast internet connection.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday February 06 2019, @09:00PM (1 child)
How? Unless I am doing the math wrong here 1 Gbps = 125 MB/s. I see recommendations for 4K streaming between 15-40 Mbps, which should be roughly equivalent to 3-5 MB/s. So that 1 Gbps connection should theoretically support 25 screens at 4K each. This dude was really maxing his connection? I sincerely doubt it.
I think the unknown factor here was probably him or one of the kids pirating 3D 4K BluRay videos at 50 GBs each or something. I can't see them truly maxing that connection out without an impressive number of devices all doing heavy downloading at the same time.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:06PM
I maxed out a 500Mb/s fiber connection with a Windows update.
Granted, it was only for one minute, because Microsoft isn't totally insane.
Other application: high compression adds lots of latency. The people who want to move your gaming rig into the cloud need low-latency high-bandwidth solutions.