Six years ago, I nearly got my ISP to upgrade our fibre connection to 1Gbps. As I said at the time: This is a curmudgeonly post which is going to look ridiculously outdated in a few years. What's the point of Gigabit broadband? Well, it's a few years later and Virgin Media have just given me their Gig1 package for £30 per month. Nice! With all the inflation related price rises, it's great to …
While I agree that there is no real use for gigabit for the average person, I disagree that rolling out gigabit everywhere is pointless.
For anyone who wants to use the internet for more than the consumption of content, the old upload speeds were a significant barrier. Gigabit, and especially gigabit upload speeds largely removed those barriers.
Symmetric gigabit in every home has taken away a bottleneck for people who want to, for example, run a bandwidth intensive internet business from their home. It provides people with opportunities they might otherwise not get.
Symmetric gigabit is this a thing, tho? Usually consumer level broadband can be huge download, but meekly upload no matter the tech used because they’d like to sell you more expensive options. That said I’d benefit greatly with it. And agree with you (and partially OP) that it’s not for everybody. But those of us who need it, it’d be awesome.
I have 2 gig symmetric fiber and it costs $70 a month.
Speed tests confirmed that I’m actually getting 2 up 1.8 down consistently.
I have my whole house wired with cat 5e and it’s pretty nice.
Same, my ISP offers 8gb symmetrical but it’s basically their business plan for like $500 a month. I was able to max out my NVME drive downloading games though on the 2gb plan.
In the Netherlands symmetric fiber is the standard. I don’t think any company that offers fiber offers less than symmetric speeds
I have 1000 down / 1000 up personally.
They offer plans ranging from 100 / 100 to 8000 / 8000 at my address.
The only company that doesn’t offer symmetric is Ziggo, because they made the (wrong) bet that they didn’t need to invest in fiber. They only offer up to 1000 / 50 over coax.
That’s as it should be. Lucky you. I’m with A1 (Vodaphone, 2nd biggest Slovene operator) which offers 1000/100 by default without an option to upgrade. Perhaps one can get faster speeds, but then it should get it as company at company price. The biggest one (just checked) offers 1000/300 with an option to upgrade. Perhaps I should check it out…
1000/300 sounds like coax to me. That is the exact theoretical speed Ziggo could deliver if they upgraded their network to DOCSIS 3.1… But ofc upgrading is expensive, so they don’t do it.
I’m with Odido myself. That is a rebrand of the Dutch branch of T-Mobile.
Quite happy with their service generally. The mechanics had no idea what they were doing when connecting everything up, but once it was working it all worked flawlessly.
It’s not coax, just the speed is. But you can upgrade it, they say. We have a pretty good fiber coverage in Slovenia.
It is, in locations with consumer fiber. Had it at the last place I lived, and hands down it was the hardest thing to give up when we moved.
I have fiber in my basement and could book gbit. Upstream is still nerfed, currently I have 250mbits down, 50 up
Edit: disregard that, just checked with my ISP and apparently I have an old plan, and could book 1 gig symmetric. For thrice the cost, though
Cool, I wish we had that in Slovenia. Currently on 1000/100 fiber. 🥹
Yes, it is, but with fiber. I have 1 gig up and down through my county’s public fiber network, with a future option to expand up to 2.5 gig symmetric.
Technically it is with fiber, what operator offers you is another story. I’m glad for you, I wish I had the same option. If you don’t mind, what country and price?
I’m in Western Washington State in the US, I pay $65/mo.
On my previous coax connection upload was severely limited, even if download went up to gigabit. Now that we have fibre we can get 1 gig up and down.
I’m meant to be getting it this summer when they finish building around here. Very much looking forward to not having that bottleneck at the edge of my local network.
I know it is a bit churlish to complain that people haven’t read the post, but I literally say in it:
they just disproved your point