Who needs a Gig of bandwidth?

Over on LinkedIn, someone wrote, "....Netflix and video-conferencing do not require more than 6 to 10 Mbps. Outside of IPTV, I have no idea how the target of 25 to 50 Mbps can be justified for the average household or business."

Let's not confuse the bandwidth needed for Internet access with the bandwidth needed for other services and applications. The incumbents do this intentionally all the time with sarcastic "Nobody needs a Gig of Internet" remarks that are designed to belittle anyone that criticizes them.

Here is a real life example to demonstrate my point. On one of our multi-service network construction projects, we met with a major local employer (5000+ employees) who was aggressively trying to offer as much as 20% of their workforce the chance to work from home, as a quality of life issue.

They wanted 50 megabit symmetric connections between each home-based worker and the local corporate network. The math for them was simple. They wanted every home-based worker to have HD video meetings with as many as three or four co-workers at a time, with each HD 1080p video stream using 8 to 10 megabits. So you very quickly get to 40 or 50 meg just to take part in the morning staff meeting. To make the video work, you also have to have symmetric circuits. And if those folks start doing some screen sharing with more video, you are quickly maxing out a 50 meg connection.

This was all going to be done on the local multi-service network that we have now built, so no IP (Internet) was needed.

But we also just had a conversation with a start up IP-TV provider, who told us that two major cable channels (I can't name them, but you would recognize them instantly) are already talking about wanting 15-18 meg PER CHANNEL for very high def live video and 3D movies. So you have four people in the house, and they are all watching a different channel using an average of 15 meg per channel...you are already at 60 meg. This is where we will be in just two or three years.

So I still hear, "But you haven't made the case for a Gig." The technology cost of provisioning Gig fiber connections is now just about the same as 100 meg connections. So it is simple economics to deploy Gig...it's just as cheap as 100 meg, and you don't have to worry about running out of bandwidth. Gig is not some exotic connection anymore...it's the industry standard for new active Ethernet connections for FTTH.

Again....let's not mix up the bandwidth requirements for Internet access with the bandwidth for local services...two different things entirely.

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