Can home consumers actually utilize gigabit connections to any significant degree yet? You need a sending pipe that'll accommodate you in order to actually get what you're paying for. I've got a 60mbps pipe and rarely manage to saturate it outside of things like Steam downloads.<p>To put it another way, Netflix 4k streams only require 20mbps throughput. I'd have to be watching 4k streaming video on 3 devices concurrently to saturate my <i>current</i> connection; what on earth would you need to do to actually get your milage out of a pipe that's 17 times larger?
The rest of the world is fast moving towards 1000mb/s internet meanwhile I'm sitting here in Sydney with my 'Ultra-fast' 6mbps ADSL. I can't even watch HD youtube properly and these amazing advances are going on well beyond my reach. Australia is quickly lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of technology and it needs to make serious roads toward correcting that if it wants to be taken seriously on a global stage. /rant
I'm moving to Seattle, and impulsively ordered 1Gbps residential internet service "just because" (from CenturyLink - IIRC it's ~$110/mo).<p>I since realized that I had no idea what to do with a 1Gbps residential pipe, other than "download things really, really fast."<p>So, I Ask HN: does anyone have any ideas for interesting use cases for Gigabit home Internet?
This makes me envious. In the UK, Holy Mother State has determined that 2Mbps + nasty contention ratio + fair usage policy and/or usage cap = "broadband".