Dutch ISP Demos Symmetric 100Mbps DOCSIS3

Mark.JUK writes "CAI Harderwijk, a DOCSIS 3.0 based Cable Modem operator in the Netherlands, has apparently managed to achieve a world first by demonstrating symmetric broadband internet access speeds of 100Mbps. The tiny Dutch operator is home to just over 16000 customers and was already planning a switch onto Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) technology, although this may now be delayed. The test itself is important because cable operators are still, perhaps unfairly, seen by some as being inferior to fully fibre optic-based broadband services. In reality, cable operators are, for the most part, continuing to keep pace."

8 days to download movies

[should_be_linear]

With high speed Internet, at one point it might be simpler to download zip with all relevant films ever made then to download it one by one. Lets assume there is 100 quality films created each year. For one movie in reasonable quality, you need 1GB. Assuming most people are interested in last 50 years of film industry and only few pieces older then that, you get something like 5TB zip file. Now, lets assume this 100Mbps line works on average with 60% avg. speed, it means 8 days to download "movie" file. So, still plenty room for improvement. We need something to download it overnight.

Fibre good because of less obvious reasons

[Device666]

In the end we will end up with fiber, but not necessarily because of the obvious reasons. In Negroponte's book "Being Digital" he writes about the Chinese destroying the network because of theft of the copper. So the Chinese had to use fiber because copper based network became very expensive in numerous ways. I don't say the Dutch or citizens of any other country will steal the copper, but if there is so much speculation in the commodities prices might become so high fiber will become most attractive. I am Dutch. Just before the dot com boom I moved to a rented flat. This new flat had fiber everywhere and not yet cable. Then the dot com bubble exploded and neither the cabling, telephone or fiber company wanted to do further investments on their networks. I ended up living above a fiber network which wasn't finished and no cable, so I had to resort to my old 56K dailup modem, while most people had cable or adsl. I remember the price of downloading a debian iso image. My telephone cost where often around 800 euro's that time. Ofcourse I moved again shortly. But I still hear that on my old flat they don't have fiber, though they do have cable.

Re:Inferior to fiber

[Kvasio]

No, there is another one. For time being, POE works way better on copper than on fibre.