10 Gbps FiOS Coming To An ONT Near You

In the last year, we’ve seen several providers announce 100 Mbps downstream service to your home, even though 100 Mbps is only decent in Korea, with much fanfare. Pricing hovers around $100 a month for these speeds but usually you’ll need new hardware to support these upgrades. 100 Mbps sounds great today but who knows how much bandwidth we will be consuming in a few years. That’s why Verizon’s 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) announcement is so amazing. The speeds are unparalleled by current technology and it runs on Verizon’s current fiber architecture. Essentially, using the hardware you currently have installed, you could be enjoying 10+Gbps tomorrow.

Verizon was able to test the passive optical network system (XG-PON) network running at 10 Gbps downstream and 2.4 Gbps upstream. The test also confirmed that XC-PON can run side by side with Verizon’s current signal, gigabit passive optical network (GPON), without interference. GPON currently supports 2.5 Gbps downstream and 1.24 Gbps upstream. Combined, Verizon is able to achieve a total of 12.5 Gbps downstream and 3.64 Gbps upstream which can be used with the current ONT’s installed on homes across the country.

Let’s take a step back for a second. XG-PON won’t be officially ratified until late-2010 or later so we won’t see these blistering speeds next week. Additionally, these speeds would be shared between around 30 homes at each node. That’s not to say the end user wouldn’t be able to get blistering speeds but don’t expect to run a speed test at these exact numbers.

Furthermore, remember that most users would never need these speeds. Even users who browse the internet all day or share their network with several other users don’t need anywhere near these speeds. In fact, most servers cannot accept these speeds anyway so it’s not as if browsing the web would get any faster. You would only need these speeds for high bandwidth applications such as “unicast HD video streaming, ultra-high-definition video, 3D video, user-generated content distribution, or video conferencing.”

Although I doubt I would ever need these speeds it’s nice to know that the curent fios architecture could support it. Imagine the possibilities though, home users could run servers and high-bandwidth web shows right from their homes with similar speeds to industrial models. It makes small online content producers like me very happy to see how bright the future is.