100Mbps Home Internet Service Next Year in Finland

Listen Up writes "According to an article on CNN, broadband Internet access via cable modems in Finland will be able to hit 100 Mbps as early as 2006. That would be 50 times faster than the average broadband speeds now offered to cable TV homes in Finland. Do you think this technology has the possibility of reaching U.S. shores? Or do you think the already deeply entrenched U.S. politics are going to keep this technology from ever reaching us? There are already thousands and thousands of miles of 'dark fiber' underground around the U.S."

Comments

What is the

[mingot]

What's the upload speed?

Re:What is the

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

No, its usually the speed of the line, its just american residential has dicked us around long enough for people to expect it.

When you run a 100mbit line to your office, if you only get 90mbit upstream you complain about the SLA being broken.
When you run a 5mbit line to your house, you're lucky if you get .3mbit up.

Re:What is the

[toddbu]

Ok, I really can't believe that I'm defending a cable TV company, but here I go...

Do you really blame them? They pay for bandwidth too, and if you put up a server that everyone wants to hit then that adds to their bandwidth load. They assume that you're not downloading 24x7, but a popular web server can easily be active all the time. So the upload limit makes sense from a pure business/profitability perspective.

Re:What is the

[willpall]

Bandwidth is not free, people. Home servers that need more than 256 kbps upload speed generally use the bandwidth on a consistent basis. The service you get residentially is extremely cheap compared to business-class circuits, and this is why. You get the speed benefit (down) of a fat pipe but you won't get the volume that a more expensive circuit would offer. This is not because your ISP is evil, simply because, gasp!, they intend to make a profit.

I know there are better ways to control the aggregate amount of bandwidth being consumed, but this is a simple way of doing it that is acceptable by a huge percentage of the consumers buying cable or DSL service. Those who really would like to have parity between their down and up speeds are exactly the customers ISPs don't want on residential service. They will lose money on you.

There's nothing evil about that.

(I know the parent poster didn't say they're being evil, but that's the general impression I get on these threads sometimes.)

Re:What is the

[InvalidError]

Not for the faster ADSL and cable deals.

One cable channel can serve up to 40Mbps but a single upstream channel is limited to 8Mbps. So for cable (DOCSIS) systems, this would typically be around 1/5, which is approximately what my ISP is sticking with, at around 1/6. (I know each serving group could include an arbitrary number of upstream and downstream channels but I suspect most cable ISPs, including my own, play cheap.)

BTW, there are places where 100Mbps and FTTH are already common, the catch is that these are shared networks. IIRC, in Sweden, a company basically puts everyone on a 100Mbps switched network with a single 100Mbps uplink. There is also Verizon's "Fios" where every house appears to become a node that injects and extracts traffic from an optical ring network. (Why else would the base installation require an SLA battery to specifically power the optical network tap?)

Re:What is the

[jellomizer]

You also have to realize that Cable is a shared connection so the more people using it the slower it gets. So with someone with a popular server it would slow down everyone else. Now is it fair if you are getting 52kbs because your neighbor is hosting a popular website, and chewing up all the bandwidth, and your both paying the same amount, that is why the caps are placed. So everyone can get a fair speed. And I find for normal Web Browsing 3-5mbs is fast enough.

Motorola is helping Singapore with the same tech

[Stefman]

So I assume that these speeds would be possible if Moto partners with a cable company in the states.

Nice!

[Sweetdelight]

I wish I lived there..And if the fibre doesn't have Caps, That would sweeten the deal.

Re:Nice!

[ChrisZermatt]

I'd like to live there for the *very* hot women -- fast internet isn't going to make me move anywhere!

why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

100Mbps fiber to door was available in Japan since like two years ago; about a year ago in metropolitan areas they even rolled out 1Gbps service. Finland makes the news because...?

Re:why is this news?

[temojen]

We're pinin' for the fjords?

Re:why is this news?

[timeOday]

Finland makes the news because...?

because it offers the promise of 100 mbps over existing TV cables. That is the key right there, because it means the masses (most of us) might actually benefit.

Of course if you live in a single-broadband-provider city like I do, it's hard to imagine why they'd bother.

4Mbps ought to be enough for everybody

[rmadhuram]

I already get 4Mbps downstream from Time Warner of San Diego and it is plenty!

Possibility of reaching U.S. shores?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think any cat5e can reach that long.

Dark Fiber

[BlogPope]

There are already thousands and thousands of miles of 'dark fiber' underground around the U.S."

Dark Fiber as nothing to do with home broadband. if it were between your house and the ISP, you might have something, but its not. The trick is getting high speed connections where Fiber doesn't exist.

Re:Dark Fiber

[dsginter]

Dark Fiber as nothing to do with home broadband.

Both DSL and cable internet are provided by way of fiber - its just cheaper to convert to another medium for the "last mile". See Comcast's recent dark fiber aquisition.

Completely different scale issues

[Sv-Manowar]

I think its unfair to compare these kind of rollouts to the US on a general scale. The US is practically the size of europe, and due to the state demarkations has almost the scaling problems that deploying across europe would incur (although the same core infrastructure providers would help somewhat). This isn't to say some providers aren't trying, there's definitely been a push towards fiber services as the next generation by some US providers. As for me, I'm just hoping that the UK gets its act together and starts rolling 8mb+ services out around the country, instead of the current spotty availablity in metro areas.

Re:Completely different scale issues

[EiZei]

FYI Finland is even more sparsely populated than the united states.

Benchmarking

[hattan]

"Based on our research, 30 megabits per second is the absolute minimum in future homes" I wonder what kind of tests they used to determine that figure.

Re:Benchmarking

[01000011011101000111]

Simple... Standard user downloads approximatly one hour of pron per day, encoded in "scrunched" divx = around 400mb then add 600mb of DRM, and you end up with a "user required download" or URD of 1 gig... The average user will complain if a movie that they are paying for takes longer to download than to watch (or at least will do when they're on supposedly "SUPER-FAST-AmazingLine"), so you've got to get it to them in around a hour. 30mbit/sec = approx 300kb/sec actual download = approx 18mb/minute or around 1gb/hour :P Hence 30 megabits is the absolute minimum.

Dark fiber...

[Faust7]

There are already thousands and thousands of miles of 'dark fiber' underground around the U.S.

So that's where all the dark matter is.

Obligatory Monty Python

[wootest]

Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I want to be

Re:Obligatory Monty Python

[MindNumbingOblivion]

Look! He's pining!

Not fully usable, obviously

[Peter Cooper]

Having 100Mbps would be great, but it's not as if you're going to be able to pull files off of some Web server at the full speed. Many busy servers only have 100Mbps connectivity in total themselves.

You might suggest that 100Mbps would be great for BitTorrent and the like, but the flaw is that ISP's backbones and peering arrangements are measured in gigabits, not terabits. Even an OC-48 can only take 24 customers maxing out their bandwidth on this system. A big European ISP like Demon only has 2Gbps going into the LINX.. enough for, wow, 20 customers to max out their bandwidth.

The ratio of guaranteed bandwidth to advertised bandwidth on this offering is crazy. Backbones just aren't there yet.

Re:Not fully usable, obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

enough for, wow, 20 customers to max out their bandwidth.

You assume that all of the content they want is not in Finland.

You assume wrong. There is plenty to see and do, and all you need to make use of it with bittorrent is a number of other people on this service in Finland in the swarm with you. Throw in being able to play your FPS against your local friends while downloading stuff in the background without the latency hit that causes on DSL, and you start seeing where this is going.

You may be right, nobody may ever get 100mbit from any one place, but that extra padding will make sure that everything else they're doing doesn't suffer while they try.

Re:Not fully usable, obviously

[dk.r*nger]

A big European ISP like Demon only has 2Gbps going into the LINX.. enough for, wow, 20 customers to max out their bandwidth.

Yeah, there is a 50 times wider band. This means that those 20 customers will also be finished 50 times faster, freeing up bandwidth for the next batch of 20 customers.

Point: For the same content, nothing changes. Some customers will just have their content served faster. Just because your network is 50 times faster, you're not going to view 50 times more pages on CNN.com.

For new content, well, yes, new servers on new bandwidth will be needed. That's the same story as always.

bandwidth cross borders?

[Raleel]

Anyone know what Finland has actually has for pipes into the country? 100Mbps is nice, but if you want international content, it might not be such a big deal

Re:bandwidth cross borders?

[twain]

You must be thinking of FUNET's connections (one 10 Gb/s and two 2.5 Gb/s connections for backup). That leaves out the commercial operators' connections to the world.

Re:bandwidth cross borders?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's NORDUNET's 10 Gbps to Stockholm, and EUNET (KPN) has two 2.5 Gbps links, to Hamburg and Stockholm. All of that could now be saturated by merely 150 cable customers... there's no way they won't have transfer caps.

Re:bandwidth cross borders?

[chefren]

The university network, FUNET, has 10Gbps. In addition several other ISPs have their own backbone lines out of the country. Some of them are listed at the Finnish Communication and Internet Exchange (look at the statistics). I have no idea what the total bandwith of all these operators is.

Meanwhile in japan ....

[mxpengin]

I have this FTH service in japan since last month and is very nice ... my only complain is that is very hard to get high transmition rates with the service... only if you are using things in japan . The cost is about 80 dollars a month and television services can be used on demand ( for a fee of course ). A link in english to my provider .

The problem is the last mile...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are already thousands and thousands of miles of 'dark fiber' underground around the U.S.

So what? The problem is not bandwidth in total, it is making the connection to the home to the nearest big fiber point. DSL and cable are popular with ISPs because the cables already go to the customer. Running broadband over a phone line or cable costs next to nothing. The big cost was digging up the street to put in the wire. After that, the operating costs are minimal.

If you go to a big US colocation facility, you will find that a lot of bandwidth is really cheap, because the fiber is already there. If you want a fiber connection to your home, you will have to pay an arm and a leg to put the fiber in the ground.

Wireless ISPs have a big potential advantage since they can avoid the last mile problem.

That's what I'm getting _today_.

[mdn]

Well, not really. But I could be getting it if I wasn't too cheap.

100 MBit Internet access (both ways) is offered to apartment owners in a number of Swedish towns. This costs about 76 USD a month.

As I said before, I'm too cheap to pay for that, so I'm paying for a throttled version (10 MBit/s) of the same service putting me back about 40 USD a month.

The service has been offered for quite a few years by a company called Bredbandsbolaget. (The site is in a strange foreign language though. Be warned.)

Skeptical

[WhiteWolf666]

1. Article says 100 Mbps is 50 times faster than what they have now. Thus, they have 2 Mbps cable.

2. I have 6 Mbps cable. I know people within 20-30 miles of me with 8 or 10 Mbps cable. SBC delivers 3 Mbps dsl, and delivered 6 Mbps to a select few quick enough to jump on the deal.

Does anyone else find it hard to believe that they will leapfrog technologies like that? Or, that even once those companies start selling the equipment (the article, after all, quotes an equipment manufacturer, *not* an ISP) that deployment will be instant?

VDSL, VDSL2, and a whole bunch of alphabet soup DSL types exist *right* now, but we don't see them all over the U.S.

Similarly, many American cable companies have switched much of their equipment to DOCSIS 2.0 stuff, but haven't ramped up the speeds yet (not enough backhaul).

Avaliability of equipment != deployment. Rather than idolizing some vaporware Finish deployment, we should be looking at places like S. Korea and Japan, where they've managed 2 and 3 digit broadband speeds (in Mbps) *now*, not some-time-in-the-oh-so-near-future.

I can pull up 100s of articles from SBC's Project Lightspeed, or Verizon's FIOS. Some of them talk about deploying this stuff nationwide in 2003-2004.

But do I have 100 Mbps internet yet? No.

This is a non-article. A fluff piece by an equipment manufacturer. I want to hear more about actual deployments (and they do exist), not about some companies wishful thinking.

100mbit is here

[isecore]

Here in Sweden one of the biggest ISP's (called Bredbandsbolaget or "The Broadband Company" in English) have been offering 100mbits Internet for the better part of a year now.

Admittedly it's only to their fiber/LAN-customers (which I am a part of) and with a traffic cap at 300GB/month as well as a rather hefty pricetag of approx US$113/month.

But it's available to the crazies who want it.

Re:100Mb/s speed

[KarmaMB84]

A couple dozen infected machines in Finland can now DOS attack multiple internet back bones simultaneously. GREAT.

Re:What is the upload speed

[OrangeGoo]

Just to clarify to anyone reading this, you are incorrect on terminology (not exactly the right word?). The lowercase 'k' is the SI prefix for kilo. The capital 'K' is for degrees kelvin. I tend to note bits with a little 'b' and bytes with a big 'B', as in:

300kbps ~= 38kBps

Usually, I replace the 'p' with a '/' when dealing with bytes, too (i.e., "38kB/s"). By no means a standard notation, but it works for me. Though it isn't widely used, I've also recently taken to using the IEC's units. For example:

300kbps ~= 38KiBps
(300 kilobits per second ~= 38 kibibytes per second)

Why? Because in a technical context, it's certainly much clearer. If I say I am transferring 1 kilobyte of data, does that mean 1,000 bytes or 1,024 bytes? It's ambiguous, and in design issues, it can be a critical difference.

Also, the baud rate is the signal transition rate, not the bit rate. Maybe in modems the baud rate and bit rate were usually the same, but it isn't necessarily the case. It is possible (and common) to transmit more than one bit per transition. :)

Anyway... that's all. :P

Re:What is the upload speed

[mrholyschmidt]

Um no :) 300 baud is roughly equivilent to 300 bits per second (300bps).

Not to further nit-pick, but 300 baud is 300 "symbols" per second. Using constellation diagrams 1 symbol can correspond to a variable number of bits.

In a dialup modem, 8000 baud is used at 7 databits per symbol to arrive at 56Kbps.

s/in Finland/by a Finnish manufacturer/

[Timo_TM]

RTFA.

Small-cap Finnish broadband equipment manufacturer Teleste -- said it would early next year bring to the market its ethernet-to-home product, which will give consumers access to 100Mb/s speed.

No finnish cable tv operator has yet announced it would by such a product.

Presentation about this thing at http://www.goodmood.net/teleste_vg_preview/pres2/T eleste_2.html

Um....?

[Atario]

Aren't all connections shared, at some point? Isn't that more or less the definition of the Internet?

Those DSL lines all go somewhere, you know, and I'm betting each one doesn't get its own T3...