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

[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.)

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...?

Possibility of reaching U.S. shores?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.)

Re:Completely different scale issues

[EiZei]

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