In a time when 100Mb/s makes people talk about what they will do with all that bandwidth (never mind that some European and Asian Countries already think nothing of it), here’s a report that details the growth of broadband over fiber over the next two decades. Analyst firm Analysys Mason was commissioned by the UK telecom regulator Ofcom to do an in depth study in to the future of Fiber and that has generated a report that suggests this outcome [PDF link]. The results are pretty clear — depending on what kind of a network is being used, end users will be able to access either a maximum of 10Gbps or 100Gbps. In both cases, the gateway of the provider will be 100Gbps. What you get will depend on what the ISP was feeling like when they built their network — long term or short term.
There are currently two ways to provide bandwidth to an end user via fiber. One’s called Passive Optical networking or PON. No, not PWN, although I reckon you will be able to do a lot of that on a 100Gbps connection! PON is a network that basically has one line coming out from the local access point and that line is shared between users. The total bandwidth is thus divided amongst users. PON systems are cheaper to install because there’s less Fiber required. But since the total uplink capacity is distributed, it simply gets cut down. There are already such networks in the US, like Verizon’s FIOS that uses a 2.5Gbps line that gives out a max of 40-80Mb/s up and 20-40Mb/s down.
There are two charts below. One shows the growth of PON networks as the total bandwidth available becomes 100Gbps. It gets divided down users and becoms 10Gbps of guaranteed bandwidth per user. The other chart shows what happens when networks use PTP. PTP is the other protocol that is essentially Point To Point ethernet. PTP can ensure each user the full access to the total available capacity by connecting each user to the local access point directly through fiber. This is what the FTTH in the UK is all about at this point — Fiber To The Home. This will ensure both higher speeds than PON lines and future exapandability.
The main problem with PON is that it maxes out at a relatively low bandwidth and doesn’t leave much space to grow because it is already using it’s maximum capacity. PTP networks are more expensive to build because it uses more fiber but they have better headroom for expansion in the newr future. As you can see in the charts, both scenarios will reach 100Gbps at the access point around the year 2027 but what the user gets will depend on the bandwidth. In the US, Verizon is once again the only carrier to test out an XG-PON setup that can deliver a maximum capacity of 10Gbps (down) and thus provide the 100Mbps end user access that everyone’s talking about.
All of that will in the next 2-3 years, so it’s not that far away. The report says that there aren’t any visible impediments at this point that can stop this projected growth of bandwidth fiber. But while technical problems won’t stop this development, ISPs are not always eager to dig things up repeatedly. After all, laying fiber is very expensive and without early adopters, the cost is hard recover. Ultra Fast broadband is going to expensive when it happens, so ISPs might be willing to wait things out a bit and then lay the fiber once more. This is certainly true for most of the world because the users simply want or need that much bandwidth at the moment. A few megabits per second seems to be enough for most developing countries.
I am not saying that the Internet won’t develop things that utilize this bandwidth (ooh the piracy we will see, the RIAA will have a heart attack!!). We will definitely figure out ways to utilize this bandwidth. Multiple HD streams, super HD standards, HD 3D streams, massively multiplayers become well and truly massive and so on. But this new decade will not need this kind of speed for quite a few years. As the world economy shakes up from slumber and starts to grow again, the purchasing power of people will take some time to grow (in the affected countries that is). Soon we will have the infrastructure to fully utilize 10Gbps and eventually 100Gbps as well. But I don’t see it reaching ubiquity as fast as 2-3 years. Those will be the early years. Give it another decade and we are there! You can stop drooling now.
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