Singapore to trial 10Gbps home broadband Singapore's dominant telco, Singtel, has announced a pilot deployment of 10Gbps broadband to a select group next quarter, and says that it expects the blistering fast Internet service to be generally available by the later part of this year. The high speed connectivity is only possible due to the completion of Singapore’s Next …
The NSA helped kick-start a revolution where the rest of the world will stop caring about US Internet. Cheap access to 10Gbps means that the next big online service could be invented by pretty much anybody. The Internet can become more distributed, like it should be.
US home Internet is pretty much for checking mail and surfing the web. Some lucky people can even use it to watch a movie. Innovate with it? No.
Why would traffic need to go to the US anyway? Singapore is wired in to the SEA-ME-WE pipes as well as several massive pipes connecting to China, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and points beyond. Any website or internet service anyone would want either is mirrored in Singapore already, in a nearby country, or is of trivial significance.
"Why would traffic need to go to the US anyway?"
Well it wouldn't need to. If you don't want your data to go the NSA and GCHQ, then they'll come to your data with an offshore wiretap and listening station in some nowheresville that's open to business on behalf of Five-spies.
Think of it like a doctor - if you can't get to them, out of the goodness of their heart they'll come to you.
You might want to reconsider. Singapore isn't exactly a wide-open paradise. In fact, probably the only reason a place like Singapore can pull this off is it's SIZE. We're talking a tiny little SPECK off the south tip of Malaysia. Japan's a slightly better example with its many islands, but it's still only about the size of California and much denser. Color me impressed when a large, sparse country can guarantee something like 1Gbps throughout its territory.
And that's assuming you can find a site* willing and able to provide a download stream at 10Gbps.
* Maybe you could do it using torrents within Singapore, but if more than a few dozen people did that at once, there's going to be a central switch taking a hell of a hammering.
Agree this is a largely pointless pissing contest at the moment. I'm in Singapore and I have 1gbps, but even that is more than I can use. The only reason I have 1gbps is because my provider keeps upgrading everyone for free, so in the last 18 months 300mbps became 500mbps, became 1gbps...
Synthetic speed test aside, real world speed on a single client (fast desktop PC, direct 1GBE connection to router, 2x 50 connection Usenet servers, 1 US and one NL) maxes out around 50MB/s. It's nice to think I could do this while simultaneously streaming UHD Netflix to all my non-existent 4K devices, though...
The internet only goes as quick as the slowest connection so no matter how fast your local connection is your download / upload will only go as fast as the server you are connected to and it's internet connection.
Since I upgraded to 38mbs FTTC from broadband, things are faster, but typically not that much faster for a lot of sites.
Internationally, I was always surprised at how little infrastructure had to fail (eg single undersea cable cut by a trawler or earthquake) to effectively cut off a whole country. How useful your local gigabit link now?
Yes it is. While your point has merit its a bit naive.
The slowest-link factor applies only at the level of single connections. Having a bigger pipe at your end means you can have more connections operating in parallel to many different "slow" services and your total experience is faster and more convenient.
If you are lucky enough to hit a remote end that is also fast it gets to the point you dont even notice the Internet was there. Stuff "just happens".
The point still stands since there are frequently chokepoints: points where it's not only slow but the only practical way to get there (either there's no alternative or any alternative is even slower than the chokepoint). Think one of those underwater cables and they're really REALLY busy at the moment. That's why the longer the trip, the more likely things show down because the more likely you hit chokepoints. Trust me, I speak from experience.
From the content provider side 8k is only being developed for public display use currently, although I am sure Samsung and Sony will try and sell it to consumers because they want muppets to buy a display they couldn't possibly appreciate with human eyes at reasonable viewing distances. 1080p140 is actually beautiful and more striking to me than 4Kp50, but the marketdroids haven't noticed and are focused on flogging 4K panels.
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