Around the world, we’re seeing some migration to 10 Gbps residential broadband. During the last year, the broadband providers in South Korea, Japan, and China began upgrading to the next-generation PON and are offering the blazingly fast broadband products to consumers. South Korea is leading the pack and expects to have the 10 Gbps speed to about 50% of subscribers by the end of 2022.

In the US there are a handful of ISPs offering a 10 Gbps product, mostly for the publicity—but they stand ready to install the faster product. Notable is Fibrant in Salisbury, NC and EPB in Chattanooga. EPB which was also among the first to offer a 1 Gbps residential product a few years ago.

I have many clients who already offer 10 Gbps connections to large business and carrier customers that serve large businesses like data centers and hospital complexes. However, except for the few pioneers, these larger bandwidth products are being delivered directly to a single customer using active Ethernet technology.

There are a few hurdles for offering speeds over a gigabit in the US. Perhaps foremost is that there are no off-the-shelf customer electronics that can handle speeds over a gigabit—the typical WiFi routers and computers work at slower speeds. The biggest hurdle for an ISP continues to be the cost of the electronics. Today the cost of next-generation PON equipment is high and will remain so until the volume of sales brings the per-unit prices down. The industry market research firm Ovum predicts that we’ll see wide-spread 10 Gbps consumer products starting in 2020 but not gaining traction until 2024.

In China, Huawei leads the pack. The company has a 10 Gbps PON system that is integrated with a 6 Gbps WiFi 6 router for the home. The system is easy and overlays on top of the company’s traditional GPON network gear. In South Korea, the largest ISP SK Broadband has worked with Nokia to develop a proprietary PON technology only used today inside of South Korea. Like Huawei, this overlays onto the existing GPON network. In Japan the 10 Gbps PON network is powered by Sumitomo, a technology only being sold in Japan. None of these technologies has made a dent in the US market, with Huawei currently banned due to security concerns.

In the US, there are two technologies being trialed. AT&T;is experimenting with XGS-PON technology. They plan to offer 2 Gbps broadband, upgradable to 10 Gbps in the new high-tech community of Walsh Ranch being built outside of Ft. Worth. AT&T;is currently trialing the technology at several locations within its FTTP network that now covers over 12 million passings. Verizon is trying the NG-PON2 technology but is mostly planning to use this to power cell sites. It’s going to be hard for any ISP to justify deployment of the new technologies until somebody buys enough units to pull down the cost.

Interestingly, Cable Labs is also working on a DOCSIS upgrade that will allow for faster speeds of up to 10 Gbps. The problem most cable networks will have is in finding space of their network for the needed channels to support the faster speeds.

There are already vendors and labs exploring 25 Gbps and 50 Gbps PON. These products will likely be used for backhaul and transport at first. The Chinese vendors think the leap forward should be to 50 Mbps while other vendors are all considering a 25 Mbps upgrade path.

The real question that needs to be answered is if there is any market for 10 Gbps bandwidth outside the normally expected uses like cellular towers, data centers, and large business customers. This same question was asked when EPB at Chattanooga and LUS in Lafayette, Louisiana rolled out the earliest 1 Gbps residential bandwidth. Both companies were a bit surprised when they got a few instant takers for the faster products—in both markets from doctors that wanted to be able to analyze MRIs and other big files at home. There are likely a few customers who need speeds above 1 Gbps, with doctors again being good candidates. Just as broadband speeds have advanced, the medical imaging world has grown more sophisticated in the last decade and is creating huge data files. The ability to download these quickly offsite will be tempting to doctors.

I think we are finally on the verge of seeing data use cases that can eat up most of a gigabit of bandwidth in the residential environment. For example, uncompressed virtual and augmented reality can require masses of downloaded data in nearly real-time. As we start seeing use cases for gigabit speeds, the history of broadband has shown that the need for faster speeds is probably not far behind.