10 gig to the home costs between $4/month (efficient high volume) and $10/month more than 1 gig GPON, I estimate. Respected analyst Julie Kunstler accuses America of dozing while the Sony & KDDI are now selling 10 gig service for less than $100/month. (Fierce) If anyone wants to buy 10 gig at $100, KDDI would net a little more than if they were selling a gig for $75.The equipment and bandwidth for 10 gig are now cheap enough that it's affordable anywhere there is fiber and a good use for the speed.

I very rarely wish I had more than the 100 meg down I have although a better upstream would be very welcome. (Jennie does video.) 10 gig is about enough to serve every apartment in Jennie's 20 story building. It's enough for 30 4K camera raw outputs or about 600 4K video streams.

Adelaide has a more practical plan: The city is building 10 gig to 1,000 buildings in the central business district and major commercial strips. They expect to finish in two years. I'd bet 95+% of Adelaide businesses would rarely draw more than 1 gig, although that could change in the future. However, the cost to build to 10 gig is low enough that it pays off even at a low take rate. 

It's a smart move for Adelaide and I'd recommend it to other cities with commercial buildings without fiber. It pays off directly if the high speeds draw even a handful of businesses. Unlike Smart City manifestos, the high speeds for businesses are more than pr.

The city probably can pay off the entire cost by using the fiber for ordinary city business. They also plan "Smart Parking, Environmental Monitoring and Waste Bins."

"Smart City" programs are popping up everywhere; not many people want to live in a Dumb City. Nearly all of them have little substance.

The city does a few sensible projects and the politicians make the kind of speeches politicians do.. A slew of consultants are making a fortune. 

The smartest cities will use the fiber to put 5G millimeter wave small cells throughout. The carriers would then pick up the signals and deliver the network. Millimeter wave networks are expensive. Of course they should be shared. (Hint for my Australian friends: the National Broadband Network should do the same thing, Wi-Fi + mmWave. They could probably earn enough to cover their $15M deficit.)

Julie believes 10G EPON ONTs currently cost around 4X the cost of EPON ONTs, and everything else in the chain is also more expensive. Lasers for 10G remain expensive, driving up the cost. The consistent experience is that doubling or quadrupling speeds results in less than a 30% traffic increase. People don't watch much more Netflix when their speeds go from 50 megabits to 200 megabits. Adding the increased equipment cost over five years and the (consistently low) cost of Internet transit for large customers takes me to the $6-$11 additional cost over GPON. They use the same fiber. (Smaller ISPs, for this and many other reasons, have much higher costs.)

But I still can't imiagine what I would do with 10 gig.





Ten Gigabit Adelaide

Australia’s first 10Gbps fibre optic network.



The City of Adelaide has partnered with TPG Telecom as the ‘Official Network Provider’ to implement the first and most visible element of Ten Gigabit Adelaide: the delivery and installation of a fibre optic network across the City of Adelaide, 10Gbps data transfer capability and a range of high-performance services for the business community.

Network rollout has now commenced!

TPG has commenced installation of the network and will continue to progressively roll out to 1,000 selected buildings within the CBD and along the main commercial strips in North Adelaide within the next two years.