back to article Hyperoptic's overkill 10Gbps fibre trial 'more than a clever PR stunt'

Alternative network provider Hyperoptic today tested speeds of 10Gbps at the former Olympic village in east London, England. The biz, which is aiming to deploy its full-fibre network in 30 cities across the UK, was able to stream four high-definition 4K videos simultaneously, plus one in 8K, to a single access point. The …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wow

    I wish they could find a way to deliver anything over 10Mbps to my house.

    Apparently we're in the 2% of the country that will never get fibre broadband. And we're 1 mile from a major conurbation in the South-East.

    OpenRetch said we could get the neighbours to club together and for around £25k they could lay a fibre to us....otherwise it's 5-10Mbps for us over the 80 year old piece of wet string. Apparently not financially viable for 10 houses.

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: Wow

      For £25k you could do it yourself. Just about any leased line company will install one for that price. A mile isn't much if you can run to nearby road-side services and pull through.

      To be honest, you'll likely be better off with 4G, as a number of recent articles here are showing as the alternative when you can't get decent copper.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Wow

        >To be honest, you'll likely be better off with 4G, as a number of recent articles here are showing as the alternative when you can't get decent copper.

        It will be interesting to see a map showing 4G coverage and absence of FTTP/FTTC. I would not be surprised to find that currently, you can get FTTC/FTTP in areas not served by 4G, but high capacity(*) 4G in areas not served by FTTP/FTTC is another story...

        (*) ie. A 4G mast with fibre backhaul, capable of concurrently supporting several dozen 4G Home routers ie. a real world deployment of 4G to the home in a FTTP/FTTC not spot...

        1. short

          Re: Wow

          >It will be interesting to see a map showing 4G coverage and absence of FTTP/FTTC.

          Out here in the fens - EE's coverage map is good, and BT's service is shit.

          Obviously anecdotes are not data, but for me 4G at £60 per 200G trumps sub-megabit flaky ADSL. Sure, unmetered would be nice, but I'll take what I can get.

          [edit] I should stop saying this stuff, or people will sign up and my tower / backhaul will get contended to hell. I certainly don't miss the home-from-school and early evening VM slowdowns at my last place, on a notionally much faster service.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Fiber backhaul to cell tower

          Just because a given resident can't get fiber service to their home is no reason to expect that a telco can't get fiber service to their towers.

          I'm willing to bet there are a lot more areas where you can get good 4G but can't get FTTH/FTTC than there are areas where you can get FTTH/FTTC but can't get good 4G (assuming an antenna on the outside of your house, cellular broadband isn't limited to that corner of your house where you only get 1 bar)

          1. Ian Michael Gumby
            Boffin

            @DougS Re: Fiber backhaul to cell tower

            Actually if you can't get fiber to the house then you most likely won't see fiber to the tower. That's pretty much a given. (Hint, you have to run the fiber and that's the expensive part. So you can run multiple fibers for the same price offering both telco and consumer fiber.)

            In much of the rural US you will see cell towers with microwave point to point antennas to handle the communication from the cell to carrier.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: @DougS Fiber backhaul to cell tower

              "Actually if you can't get fiber to the house then you most likely won't see fiber to the tower. That's pretty much a given. (Hint, you have to run the fiber and that's the expensive part. So you can run multiple fibers for the same price offering both telco and consumer fiber.)"

              Most people underestimate the cost of building the fibre entry to each building. So even if there are houses nearby, the break-out may not be cost effective. And of course, every cable in the street is going to be a minimum of 12 fibres.

              Plus, there is an issue with support structure access. For example, the mobile operator may lease space in an electrical service conduit. But breaking out the electrical service conduit may be pricey.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Facepalm

                Re: @DougS Fiber backhaul to cell tower

                You really think there isn't a HUGE difference in cost running fiber just to cell towers (which are often near major roads that have utility right of ways in place) versus running fiber up to every single house all in the area? Just look at how spread out towers are versus how spread out houses are!

                Then look at how much money you can make from (potentially) selling service to a single house, and how long it will take to recoup that investment versus how long it takes to recoup the investment to run fiber to a tower which serves many customers.

                1. Roland6 Silver badge

                  Re: @DougS Fiber backhaul to cell tower

                  You really think there isn't a HUGE difference in cost running fiber just to cell towers ... versus running fiber up to every single house all in the area?

                  Well it depends on what you are comparing, I suggest the cost of installing and provisioning fibre-to-the-mast (FTTM), is significantly higher than doing the same for homes, because with FTTM, all the costs fall onto a single connection, whereas with FTTP/FTTC there is a significant amount of shared infrastructure and thus costs can be apportioned.

                  Also we shouldn't forget that BT isn't the only player in the FTTM market, thus the availability of FTTC/FTTP can have little to do with what is being used for mast backhaul, although I would hope that when a mast is upgraded to 4G, it's backhaul is also upgraded...

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: @DougS Fiber backhaul to cell tower

                    In the US, when AT&T upgraded a rural tower from 2G to 4G, they replaced the T1 or microwave link it had with fiber. They skipped upgrading most rural towers to 3G entirely because GSM had smaller cell sizes that would have required adding towers, which wasn't practical in low density areas.

                    They completed this process and shut down their 2G network in late 2016. I believe less than 1% of their US footprint is now 3G only, so almost all their towers have a fiber link - and rural areas in the western US are FAR more rural than anywhere you can find in the UK or mainland Europe.

                  2. ENS

                    Re: @DougS Fiber backhaul to cell tower

                    " suggest the cost of installing and provisioning fibre-to-the-mast (FTTM), is significantly higher than doing the same for homes, because with FTTM, all the costs fall onto a single connection, whereas with FTTP/FTTC there is a significant amount of shared infrastructure and thus costs can be apportioned."

                    You are conflating cost, return on investment and a host of other items here.

                    Bottom line, BT will quote you around £10K install plus £6-8K per year to supply 1Gbps fibre. So there is a great return on supplying 1 single line of fibre in the ground.

                    On the flip side, you are going to do a whole lot more digging to connect homes, and then you are relying on a host of individuals to each cough up a few hundred pounds each year, with 'free install'.

                    But: In 20 years time that fibre will still be delivering. 20 years ago I had 40-42Kbps on dial-up, which people tend to forget when talking about their needs "today"

                    1. Roland6 Silver badge

                      Re: @DougS Fiber backhaul to cell tower

                      >You are conflating cost, return on investment and a host of other items here.

                      No, I was simply referring to cost (to BT) and how those costs can be attributed to an individual line(*). How BT goes about reclaiming those costs is another matter. Thus I don't dispute that BT (or any other provider) will charge what they like for dedicated services, just that BT is likely to charge more because the directly attributable costs are higher.

                      >So there is a great return on supplying 1 single line of fibre in the ground.

                      For a client, just had a quote from BT for providing 100/100Mbps service over the 20+ year old copper local loop, no new cable just new boxes at each end, laughable the price they are asking - so there is still a great return on re-using pre-existing copper infrastructure.

                      >20 years ago I had 40-42Kbps on dial-up, which people tend to forget when talking about their needs "today"

                      and 20 years before that we had 9.6kbps on dial-up, totally agree with the sentiment.

                      (*) Although I accept BT can at times be sharp, a few years back BT effectively told the neighbouring village give us £80k and we will FTTC enable your cabinet, the village didn't and now has FTTP service from Gigaclear...

              2. Ian Michael Gumby

                @AC Re: @DougS Fiber backhaul to cell tower

                No, I didn't forget that.

                The cost of laying the fiber for the cell tower is cost prohibitive when you compare it against a point to point connection via microwave connections.

                I thought that was obvious.

                In terms of even pulling fiber in the city... we had an issue where we rent space for a cell tower on our condo building. They wanted to add fiber but rather than use the existing conduit owned by Ameritech, they wanted to go through a different wall and then run the fiber in the open in our garage space. I was able to nix it, and they went back and did a deal with Ameritech to use their conduit.

                I personally would love to have fiber to my unit. I could easily pull fiber to each room. While I don't even own a 4K TV I would love to have a high bandwidth throughout the house and in my SOHO lab. The only problem is that most of my older machines don't have 10GbE so it would be a short term waste.

    2. HWwiz

      Re: Wow

      @ Anonymous Coward

      Get a ProRoute 4G Router. Large MIMO external antenna. Total about £240.

      GiffGaff unlimited data SIM, and Boom there you go. 75MB up and down. Signal depending.

      Ive done over 20 of these now for people out in the sticks. If the Cell tower is local, use it !.

      1. short

        Re: Wow

        Don't GG get miffed if you tether on an 'unlimited' plan?

  2. Christian Berger

    Well you need individual fibres anyhow...

    ...as GPON costs more to upgrade to anything newer than using individual fibres.

    The main point here is of course the upstream. Few people care about >1 GBit downstream, the bottleneck usually is the upstream.

    1. Ian Michael Gumby
      Boffin

      Re: Well you need individual fibres anyhow...

      Huh?

      Few people care about >1 GBit downstream, the bottleneck usually is the upstream.

      Sorry but that is BS. Most residential users want faster downstream because they are cutting the cord and are streaming video. So in a family of 4, most likely you have 4 people in 4 rooms streaming video and/or music.

      In terms of upstream... it depends on what you're doing. But those people are fewer...

  3. WonkoTheSane
    Headmaster

    Venn diagram

    Why do I get the feeling that a Venn diagram of locations covered by all these FTTH ISPs would result in a single circle?

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Go

      Re: Venn diagram

      Sadly, it's beginning to look like Ofcom are going to allow that to happen. I really feel it should step in and somehow get all the CPs to work together. Maybe form a single company that the CPs have to buy shares in and prevent them laying fibre independently. They make their money back in the same way that shareholders do - as a %ge of what they put in.

      Unfortunately that seems very unlikely to ever happen.

      The CPs aren't going to be happy just handing their money over to someone else to invest 'where they see fit' with returns being 'whatever they feel like this year'.

      Ofcom probably won't be keen to create an absolute monopoly.

      But at the moment it looks like we're at real risk of having multiple fibre providers in the large urban areas and nothing outside. That's crazy. For better or worse the UK is only just starting a fibre roll-out. How about we try and do it the right way from the start? Just this once, eh?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Venn diagram

        Just FTR OFCOM doesn't work for Joe Public.

        And never has.

  4. TRT Silver badge

    Latency...

    latency and consistency.

    My ping varies between 7ms and 200ms. Speed, I'm getting 112Mbps on a 100Mbps contract, so I'm happy with that.

    Internally, my network runs at 10Gbps between the media server and the distribution switch. I've no other devices that can do that kind of speed! But this is very exciting. Especially seeing as my workplace can't seem to manage WAN access over 10Gbps for 1000s of people to share.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Latency...

      Those numbers smell like Verminmedia and a Hub 3, if I'm any judge. And if you are a Hub 3 sufferer, they started rolling out the firmware patch last night, although we have yet to see how many things it does fix, and what it leaves (forever) unfixed.

    2. K

      Re: Latency...

      I work for a FTSE company in the City with 2000+ employees, we're only running on a 200Mbps link...

      Ironically, until last year, I worked for a small company in middle of no-where and we had a 1Gbps connection...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Latency...

        I work for a FTSE company in the City with 2000+ employees, we're only running on a 200Mbps link...

        That's one way of stopping people booking their holidays during work time, or browsing "adult" content. I'll bet it works, too.

        1. TRT Silver badge

          Re: Latency...

          It is Verminmedia, but I use their Hub3 in modem mode only. After that it's SOHO / medium-sized business level kit.

          1. TRT Silver badge

            Re: Latency...

            It would be brilliant if it weren't for the thing crapping out for 2 minutes five times a day and never the same ping twice. I have constant monitoring and logging of the connection quality turned on. It's almost as if they reboot the cable head once or twice every shift.

          2. TheVogon

            Re: Latency...

            "It is Verminmedia, but I use their Hub3 in modem mode only."

            Doesnt make any difference. It will still have latency spikes and packet loss.

  5. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

    Hmm, haven't we seen a few outfits make the "we can't see a need for these speeds" before in the past. I can remember when people were wondering what to do with 512k on ADSL !

    ut of course, the former Olympic village must be one of the best places in the country to try this - massive new development with facilities for comms designed in from the start, unlike most developments new or old.

    1. inmypjs Silver badge

      "I can remember when people were wondering what to do with 512k on ADSL !"

      Really? I was pissed off the 8Mb the green frogs could do was crippled to 512k so BT could continue to rip off its leased line and ISDN customers.

      That said there are limits to the data rate humans can consume or generate. 64k is enough for voice and has been since the telephone was invented for example. 4k video is mostly bollocks that people can't see. So after about 20Mb per person the only advantage is waiting less time to get big gobs of data to be consumed slower and that isn't worth a lot.

      I use my 80Mb connection about 1% of the time what advantage to I get using a 1Gb connection less than 0.1% of the time?

      1. Adelio

        VM and speed

        If I did not have to use a VPN i would get a lot more speed.

        Without the VPN i get 200mb but using a VPN (express VPN) i get at most 3-4mb.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      >the former Olympic village must be one of the best places in the country to try this - massive new development with facilities for comms designed in from the start, unlike most developments new or old.

      And BT not deliberately holding things up to sweat it's clapped out assets with already obsolete and unreliable FTTC. Go to any ISP providers forum and the issues with FTTC are enormous due to rotten copper & aluminium, fibre is needed to replace these antique lines and is far more reliable. No more should be invested in FTTC and everything from now on should be fibre.

  6. Blockchain commentard

    Well, Jersey Telecom has been offering 1Gb fibre for a year or so. Just a pity due to contention and uplink speeds, I can only get 60 Meg using either Speedtest.net or fast.com plus the ridiculous cost and they only give 100 Meg upload (seems the bosses think fibre is the same as ASDL).

    1. kain preacher

      wow even ATT gives you damn near symmetrical speed once you are on fibre and have 100Mb or faster. Gb tops out at 960Gb.

    2. phatboy

      You're doing it wrong then. I just did a test through speedtest.net from my JT 1GB Service to a Maidenhead host, and got 976Mb down, and 91.2 up.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      >either Speedtest.net or fast.com plus the ridiculous cost

      The GDP per capita of Jersey is somewhat higher than that of the rUK

  7. 's water music

    obligatory

    I'll be glad when Clacks reaches my neck of the woods

  8. Ben Rose
    Megaphone

    Poor contention?

    We have Hyperoptic in our apartment building, selling speeds of up to 1Gbps.

    We signed up to the 100Meg download/upload service but I've never seen speeds faster than 60meg - don't see any point in selling 1000Mbps when they can't even deliver 100.

    (Same kit happily downloads at 150Meg in our other property connected by a different provider)

    1. OnlyMortal

      Re: Poor contention?

      I've got the 1Gbps symmetric connection here in Bristol and with SpeedTest on my iPhone I get ~400Mbps over wifi and I've seen in do around 800Mbps with Ethernet (MacBook Pro Late 2013).

      I switched the Hyperoptic router for a LinkSys WRT1900ACS with the standard firmware.

      1. Baldrickk

        Re: Poor contention?

        I've got the 1Gbps symmetric connection here in Bristol and with SpeedTest on my iPhone I get ~400Mbps over wifi

        I wouldn't expect a faster speed from a phone. In fact I'm surprised to see you got that much. I've yet to see a phone max out my 125Mb/s download at home (Though my desktop hits the limit just fine over wifi)

        Physical connections with quality kit are the way to go for reliable high speeds.

    2. benoliver999

      Re: Poor contention?

      To offer anther viewpoint: I have the Gigabit link with them and can easily pull 900mbps. Pretty sure I'm hitting my hardware limits rather than their connection speed limit.

  9. ibmalone

    She said that, from a residential perspective, limited hardware specs mean it's difficult to find a PC that will be cable of doing over 100Mbps.

    The decade-old chipset on my home machine can do 1Gbps LAN, where are they getting their PCs?

    1. Ben Rose
      Megaphone

      my phone can do 150meg over WiFi - they're in a dreamworld.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The decade-old chipset on my home machine can do 1Gbps LAN, where are they getting their PCs?

      You'd be surprised what crippled, outdated shite manufacturers will dredge up when a tight fisted corporate buyers asks "Haven't you got anything cheaper?".

      Actually you probably wouldn't.

    3. Joe Montana

      Chipsets

      A lot of cheaper chipsets are capable of connecting to a gigabit ethernet connection, but not actually transferring data at the full rate...

      Aside from the chipset, it also depends on your (pci/e/x/etc) bus, memory, processor, and if your downloading data - the disk onto which the data is being written.

      There have been gigabit ethernet nics for nearly 20 years, some are better than others.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Chipsets

        A bit dated, but the principles still applicable: Gigabit Ethernet: Dude, Where's My Bandwidth?

        Interestingly, the article misses the other components: software and protocol stacks.

        There have been issues where the standard Windows NIC drivers don't support higher speed connections, additionally, it should be noted that things have to some extent changed since the late 1980's and running your protocol stack in the machine's CPU rather than on an intelligent NIC probably isn't a good thing if you really want to fully utilise high-speed networks. Also as was discovered in the 1980's - when high-speed networking was 25~30Mbps, TCP/IP (and other similar protocol stacks) doesn't scale particularly well, so I wouldn't expect a single TCP/IP connection to be able to get anywhere near saturating the line.

  10. chivo243 Silver badge
    Meh

    difficult to find a PC that will be cable of doing over 100Mbps.

    What year is this? Or has the gigibit network not been invented yet?

    r. van winkle

    1. Steve Todd

      Re: difficult to find a PC that will be cable of doing over 100Mbps.

      My thought also. 1Gb/sec Ethernet works out to be 80-100MB/sec file transfers. A half decent SSD equipped home PC these days can read and write at better than 200MB/sec.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: difficult to find a PC that will be cable of doing over 100Mbps.

        "My thought also. 1Gb/sec Ethernet works out to be 80-100MB/sec file transfers. "

        No, it's closer to 120MB/s

        1. Roland6 Silver badge

          Re: difficult to find a PC that will be cable of doing over 100Mbps.

          >No, it's closer to 120MB/s

          No, you are confusing raw data rates with TCP/IP payload data rates. After allowing for network fabric latency (not all switches are equal! ), protocol overheads, Internet connection dictated packet size constraints and window/ack latency, I would expect to see a user transfer rate in the 80~100MB/sec space. However, in the real world, after allowing for system limitations/bottlenecks you may find your maximum user data transfer rate to be as low as 38MB/sec.

  11. Lee D Silver badge

    "For the trial it used a single thread of single mode fibre with a bidirectional 10G SFP+ transceiver."

    You mean... they bought a switch off Amazon, stuck an off-the-shelf SFP in it, and plugged it into some compatible fibre which ran down the road?

    Oh, wow.

    And, I'll flood 1Gbps in a household connection in no time. Just a matter of having the right kind of task at hand (e.g. a large flat uncached download), a decent router and a couple of computers connected to it. Hell, I could grab any huge, popular torrent and hit max speed in a matter of seconds, so long as there was a decent upload on the same pipe.

    But I don't think this is anything surprising or special. And every computer has 1Gbps Ethernet and probably 300-400 Mbps on the wireless. It just needs a box capable of taking 10-or-so of those and combining them to flood a 10Gbps fibre, let alone anything smaller.

    1. Solviva

      Just what I was thinking...

      Headline:

      Company plugs fibre into 10Gb SFP+s and get's a 10Gb link!

      Might have made headlines in 2005ish :D

  12. Simon Rockman

    8k video isn't just about frame rate. Experiements at the BBC showed that you also need a faster frame rate. There is an 8k, 240fps standard. Even compressed that's a lot of data, Current HDMI won't do it let alone the broadband.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      We'll never see it so it doesn't matter. I have a feeling 4Kp120 is going to be about the limit. Just because better quality is possible doesn't mean it will be delivered - otherwise we would all be getting DVD-A quality FLAC audio streaming, instead of MP3/AAC, because the latter is "good enough" for the vast majority.

      Heck, its not even guaranteed 4K will take off and be anything more than a niche, and we'll end up sticking with HD in most cases.

  13. Kubla Cant

    servings[sic] tens-of-hundreds of people

    Or, as we call them in English, "thousands".

  14. Cynic_999

    Traffic volume maxed?

    ISTM that increasing the speed above 25Mbps or so is unlikely to increase the total amount of data downloaded or uploaded. People will get their movie downloads faster, but they will not download more movies per week. Being able to download a movie in 6 seconds means that there will not be nearly so many people downloading a movie at the same time. Therefore if an ISP increases its speed to the user, it probably won't need to increase its capacity a great deal. Of course, you'll get a few people who decide to download 100 movies a day because it becomes feasible to do so, but I doubt most people will change their Internet usage very much.

    Until that sort of speed becomes commonplace that is, whereupon web sites will start streaming 4K video adverts, and Windows 10 will automatically upload the entire contents of your HDD to Redmond every day in order to improve your user experience.

    1. Tom Samplonius

      Re: Traffic volume maxed?

      "STM that increasing the speed above 25Mbps or so is unlikely to increase the total amount of data downloaded or uploaded. People will get their movie downloads faster, but they will not download more movies per week. Being able to download a movie in 6 seconds means that there will "

      You are right. Just because there is more bandwidth, people don't download that much more.

      But there is a big difference. Gigabit Internet is Internet that "just works". You don't have to worry about your phone deciding to upload photos, and lagging your streaming video. Or Windows 10 downloading updates. You can finally do whatever you want, whenever you want. No more scheduling your Internet usage. That's gigabit Internet in a nutshell.

  15. Martin Summers Silver badge

    Here we are again with someone saying we 'don't need it'. Well how about we just have the ability to do it and see what happens hey? Who are these people who make judgments on what people need? I'm reminded of the phrase 'see things as they are not as you are' and no doubt the people making the 'don't need' comments would be happy themselves with what they have stated and of course that should do for everyone else too.

    All this country really wants and desperately needs in this more and more digital economy we have is for some bugger to get on with the job of laying fibre everywhere to every home they can physically get it to. Only then worrying about what technology is put down it because at least it can be bloody changed later!

    Government have a lot to answer for with this because only they can force the issue or make it happen nationally where profit isn't the first consideration. No company will ever ever do this kind of thing as an altruistic gesture and that should be face smackingingly obvious to everyone who makes the decisions.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The porn, arrgg ...my eyes......and my hands.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And whilst you're at it, just remind us

    Who's ever going to need more than 640Kb of RAM...

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mind boggling to read those figures - ideal but impractical.

    I think that it's diminishing return, it cost too much for such a convenience everywhere.

    Might be fine on the Starship Enterprise but eg. around Australia or parts of the world, impractical.

    I also think 5g mobile would be best used industrially for uplinks and crosslinks etc. Give it a good 5-10 years at least before domestic roll out is done.

    Take time to really find the value, not just imagine short term gain.

  19. Cuddles

    Bollocks

    "That might mean in a household of four people that up to 60Mbps would be valuable."

    Why does shit like this keep being repeated? Just because you don't need more than that to stream currently available video content doesn't mean there is no value in having faster speeds available. Hell, even the examples given earlier in the article prove just how useful it would be to many people:

    "or download a 25GB Xbox game in 20 seconds, compared with 33 minutes, 20 seconds on a 100Mbps connection"

    25GB isn't a particularly big game even now, and they're only going to get bigger. 10Gbps would allow close to instant download compared to an hour or more for the 60Mbps they claim no-one could possibly need more than. Sure, we don't (currently) all need 10Gbps on tap at all times in our homes, but the idea that the bare minimum required to watch a video is all anyone could ever want is just utterly nonsensical.

    1. ChrisC Silver badge

      Re: Bollocks

      Quite, when I read that quote I instantly had a mental image forming of some quaint looking fellow dressed in a tweed suit, taking a quick puff on a well-filled briar pipe before turning to the camera, and with the faintest of smiles forming under his neatly trimmed moustache, announcing, in perfect BBC English, news of the latest wonder of the modern world sure to delight and amaze...

      For me, it's not just about headline-grabbing stuff like being able to download seriously large chunks of data in really short but still perceptible periods of time, it's also about being able to rid our lives of all the micro-interruptions caused by all of the smaller downloads that our net-connected devices seem only too happy to burden our connection with on a regular basis. When all of those smaller chunks of data can be flung around without our ever being aware of it because they're happening imperceptibly quickly, then we might be able to start questioning the need for faster connections.

      And so what if no-one can come up with any genuinely good reason for needing that much bandwidth to the home today? If someone is willing and able to install the necessary insfrastructure to deliver it now, bloody well let them get on with it without any of the "well, I really can't see the need for anything quite so fast, so harrumph harrumph mutter mutter chocolate hobnobs" naysaying. Because, sooner or later, the need will come, and wouldn't it be really nice if, just for once, at least part of the country already had the necessary bandwidth in place?

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Bollocks

      >25GB isn't a particularly big game even now, and they're only going to get bigger. 10Gbps would allow close to instant download compared to an hour or more for the 60Mbps they claim no-one could possibly need more than.

      But at these performance levels, I question whether you actually need to download an entire game etc.before you start playing, in fact Linda spaces become viable propositions.

  20. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

    "standard HD movie file (5GB) in 4 seconds"

    ..assuming that the provider has the bandwidth to cope..

    I've yet to see an article on high-speed home broadband that mentions that in any detail!

  21. Graham Jordan

    Hyperoptic customer her

    1GB is great and all, but the router they supply you with doesn't support 802.11ac; what's worse is they use CGNAT by default. Realistically, anyone that feels a need for that kind of speed is very quickly going to come up against the badly planned limitations.

    On the plus side, once you pay for a static IP, replace the router with something that actually works, shit the bed downloads fly. 40gb 4k movie takes longer to unpack than it does to download.

  22. GreenReaper
    FAIL

    The Register needs to do some fact checking before blandly reproducing corporate assertions - or just making up figures themselves by rough figures scrawled on the back of a packet of crisps.

    Current Xbox One models ship with Gigabit Ethernet and 801.11ac 2x2 MIMO, immediately cutting maximum speed by a factor of ten. So it's literally impossible for a 25GB download to take 20 seconds - three and a half minutes is more feasible.

    Looking around at people who actually have Gigabit suggests that the servers (or possibly, the hard drive) currently limits it to of around 230Mbps, so it's more like fourteen and a half minutes.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: GreenReaper

      All right, GrumpyReaper. I think you're being overly pedantic. Half the article stresses that home hardware can't handle the high-speeds, and that 1Gbps is more than enough let alone 10Gbps.

      We assume all Reg readers are smart enough to understand that YMMV when discussing theoretical maximum data transfer speeds. Since you're being so pedantic, consider this: we didn't say anything about _writing_ the data to disk, merely fetching it. So yes, you can download a 25GB game in a few seconds over a 10Gbps line - writing it to storage is another thing entirely, which Reg readers know all too well.

      I've tweaked the piece to make it crystal clear.

      C.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: GreenReaper

        But being pedantic, to be able to: "stream four high-definition 4K videos simultaneously, plus one in 8K, to a single access point." doesn't actually need a 1Gbps connection - so what was it exactly that Hyperoptic demonstrated...

        1. ChrisC Silver badge

          Re: GreenReaper

          Depends on how heavily the videos are compressed - I get the feeling this demo was being done with an eye on the TV & film industry, as a way to woo the sort of companies who generate and work with uncompressed video and who might therefore be rather interested in anything which could help them move that data between sites, or between them and their clients, faster than writing it all to a removable drive and handing it to a bike courier to get it across the city...

    2. Tom Samplonius

      "Looking around at people who actually have Gigabit suggests that the servers (or possibly, the hard drive) currently limits it to of around 230Mbps, so it's more like fourteen and a half minutes."

      No. I can download Windows updates at ~ 900Mbps. Apple macOS updates are ~ 800ms. Google (Drive) uploads can easily hit ~ 900Mbps. The big issue with Drive is the transaction latency. Uploading 10GB of 18,000 files takes a lot longer than one 10GB file.

      Yes, there are old servers out there with just 1Gbps Ethernet, so you only get whatever capacity isn't used by other users. But the big 4 (Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google), are already very fast. Time to get off of that dodgy shared web hosting.

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