Amsterdam Tests Residential 1Gbps Fiber

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"Amsterdam not only has one of the busiest global Internet exchanges, but consumers also see some fantastic speeds in a city that increasingly treats broadband like a utility. Cable operators have been testing 120Mbps pre-certification DOCSIS 3.0 speeds, the city was the first in Europe to see Wireless WiMax, and they're also deploying municipal fiber thanks to private investment funds and an organization named CityNet. Cooperatively with Netherlands carriers GNA, BBned, and InterNLnet, the outfit has just concluded a 3-day test of 1Gbps connectivity for residential consumers over their network."

"The technical results are quite satisfying," says CityNet's Managing Director Herman Wagter (this older interview is a must read). "The upgrade to 1 Gbps was easy," Wagter says in an e-mail announcing the project. "The STB's are not yet stable but do perform well enough. The transfer speeds to disk of a normal laptop is too slow, a desktop PC will give you 500 Mbps, an optimized PC reached 990 Mbps symmetrical transfer." Not only is CityNet running fiber to the home, they're running fiber to the houseboat (which, if you've visited, are almost as common as bicycles):

It seems the company has developed a new type of optical connector that allows houseboat owners to physically connect to Amsterdam's CityNet fiber-optic network upon mooring and disconnect whenever a trip is necessary. "Trials proved that with minor modifications, a very robust beam connector originally developed for military applications is ideally suited for houseboat applications. It can be cleaned easily and has good transmission characteristics." As for bumping speeds to 1Gbps, Wagter says that the price levels of equipment are dropping to a level where "1 Gbps seems to become commercially viable", and the consumer equipment for fast and practical home networks (including settopboxes for full HD) is appearing on the market. "So it seemed a good idea to do some testing to prepare ourselves," he says.

Roughly about 40,000 homes (and houseboats) are currently connected to the CityNet network, with the plan being to bring connectivity to half a million. For those interested, CityNet has posted a YouTube video of the 1Gbps connectivity test. The 120 meter patch-cord shown in the video is new bendable fiber, a variant of which, made by Corning (see source link) is now being used for FiOS installs in NYC.

:source: Source: DSLReports.com

I wish we had speeds like that in the U.S.

There is incredible the difference of the Internet development between the countries of the EU. Congratulations to all the citizens of Amsterdam ;)

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Originally Posted by Seedright

There is incredible the difference of the Internet development between the countries of the EU. Congratulations to all the citizens of Amsterdam ;)

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Sadly not in the UK.:angry:

wow, soon internet is going to be up to the speed of computers.
Basically the internet won't be the slow factor anymore, it will be the computer's hard disks. :lol:

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Originally Posted by tesco

wow, soon internet is going to be up to the speed of computers.
Basically the internet won't be the slow factor anymore, it will be the computer's hard disks. :lol:

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Yes tesco with all the technology getting better

a connection like that would cost a fortune

Ridiculously cool stuff. Jealous of Amsterdam residents bigtime :)

The Netherlands have always seemed to have access to top tier internet speeds. It's a shame that more countries don't have an internet infrastructure that supports speeds like that at home because people would definitely be willing to pay for even 100mbit at home. I suppose because the Netherlands is a fairly small country it is much easier to upgrade it's internet infrastructure so that it can support those speeds.

Amazing internet connection ...

So, why does all of Europe have better internet speeds than the United States? I wish I lived in Europe now... 1 Gbps to my house would rock :D.

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Originally Posted by AppleMonger

So, why does all of Europe have better internet speeds than the United States? I wish I lived in Europe now... 1 Gbps to my house would rock :D.

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Well, from my understanding...

It all started with all countries having nothing, obviously.

Telephone became big in all countries (by all i mean the 'wealthy' ones).

Cable became big in north america while europe stuck to using the airwaves for television.
So north america spent big money getting the country wired up on fibre for cable.

Europe never spent that much on laying fibre, so now that higher internet speeds are wanted they're spending big money on the latest fibre technology including running it right into the homes, same as verizon fios is doing in small areas of the US, because without it they're stuck with 'slow' DSL speeds from their telephone lines.

In North America they're not putting much money into the fibre systems because we already put a ton of money into our current, 'out-of-date' system.

In the future we'll probably upgrade and be far ahead of europe, then it will switch again. It's just a cycle. ;)

That's my very basic understanding anyway.

I think that's certainly part of it, Ross but the other part is distance.
Yurp has much higher population density than the US and less distance to span.

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Originally Posted by clocker

I think that's certainly part of it, Ross but the other part is distance.
Yurp has much higher population density than the US and less distance to span.

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Yes that's also part of it but it shouldn't stop them from at least expanding into the denser areas like toronto, montreal, new york, etc.

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Originally Posted by Seedright

There is incredible the difference of the Internet development between the countries of the EU. Congratulations to all the citizens of Amsterdam ;)

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Yeah true. I got 20Mbit down and I live in Belgium and we still got downloadlimits :cry:

wow hope we can get it