The latest broadband statistics from Point Topic (via GigaOM ) suggest that globally, fiber to the home…

1. Cable (5 Mbps-ish on a good day)
2. ADSL (1.5 Mbps Pretty consistant)
3. Clearwire (? Mbps Not sure but I know its Wimax Technology and it is currently little slower than ADSL)

You are right, and most websites do cap their pipes, since there is a possibility of someone on a corporate connection hogging site’s bandwidth and leaving every one else staring at loading screens. At that rate, however, single user should be able to get whatever content they are after in a short period of time, however, it may interrupt streaming and response-dependant content.

I do think, however, that if average available bandwidth would increase to a true gig/sec – we would see some very interesting things appear on the web, some of which we can’t even imagine at this moment.

No. Reality is exactly the speeds promised, at least as far as FiOS goes. Every speakeasy.net speed test I’ve tried gives me exactly the promised bandwidth (well, 14.95Mbs down and 1.95 up, accounting for overhead), and everyone with FiOS over at Broadband Reports says the same thing.

Now cable, of course, may not hit the theoretical maximums as much.

No. Reality is exactly the speeds promised, at least as far as FiOS goes. Every speakeasy.net speed test I’ve tried gives me exactly the promised bandwidth, and everyone with FiOS over at Broadband Reports says the same thing.

Now cable, of course, the theoretical maximums may not be hit as much.

Depends on where, actually. In northern Virginia, it’s $54.95/month for 30Mbps/5Mbps. The NYC metro area is similar (strong competition with Cablevision).

And the greater “visibility” aside, fiber is pretty hard to get in most any country, unless you’re in one of a few big cities. It’s not like it’s in France outside of Paris. In Japan, NTT’s fiber to the home was the first to launch and has a nice head start, but was still limited to central Tokyo and Osaka until very recently.

Japan and France do have the advantage of having very high percentages of their populations in their capital cities (much higher than the US.) Pretending that everyone in France or Japan can get fiber, though, is just as ridiculous as pointing to Verizon’s FiOS and saying that its existence in some cities makes everything hunky-dory for everyone in the USA.

Verizon’s prices according to http://www22.verizon.com/content/consumerfios/packages+and+prices/packages+and+prices.htm

Up to 5 Mbps is $34.95 Up to 15 Mbps is $44.95 Up to 30 Mbps is $179.95

Comcast’s prices according to http://www.comcast.com/shop/buyflow/default.ashx Up to 6 Mbps $42.95 Up to 8 Mbps $52.95

Very interesting article! I didn’t realize this, so thanks for the heads up!

http://www.patentmonkey.com/PM/PatentID/6961335.aspx

On this note I ran across a news story the other day and wrote about a small town in NC who has taken matters into their own hands and are installing the fiber network themselves. http://www.eastcoastblogging.com/blog/2006/12/06/wilson-nc-local-government-installing-citywide-fiber-network/

I think this ties into the data your show. Better yet I love the fact that Verizon will have to lease the city’s fiber lines.