Cable has 10 Gigabit per second internet technology but will only deploy 600 megabit per second or less in 2016

Key hardware for the next generation DOCSIS 3.1 cable broadband standard, which could eventually be used by Virgin Media (Liberty Global) to deliver top UK Internet download speeds of up to 10Gbps (Gigabits per second) and 1Gbps uploads via their predominantly urban network, has successfully passed its first interoperability tests.

At present Virgin Media is only lab testing DOCSIS 3.1 and as a result their hybrid (HFC) Fibre-to-the-Local/Node (FTTN) style network, which delivers the final connection into homes via a short run of copper or high-grade coaxial cable and is predominantly based off a EuroDOCSIS variant of the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS3), offers maximum download speeds of up to 152Mbps.

It’s also widely predicted that Virgin Media will next year introduce another double speed boost, which will use the operators existing standards rather than the future DOCSIS 3.1 spec, that will take their performance up to 300Mbps for home users. But after that Virgin’s ability to pull more speed out of their existing kit will become increasingly difficult and future upgrades may require DOCSIS 3.1.

Cable giant Liberty Global, which owns Virgin Media and many other cable providers, have made no secret of their desire to see a commercial roll-out of DOCSIS 3.1 by the end of 2016 and the first completed hardware should be ready for field trials during H1-2015. In the meantime Virgin has also been conducting some limited deployments of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology, which in the future may help to expand their coverage into areas where extending via HFC could be more troublesome.

A more likely introduction speed for cable internet users will be around 500-600Mbps, which would no doubt be accompanied by yet another new batch of cable router/modems

High Tech Lab and Government Internet getting boosted from 100 Gigabits per second to 340 Gigabits per second

The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Energy Sciences Network, or ESnet, is deploying four new high-speed transatlantic links, giving researchers at America’s national laboratories and universities ultra-fast access to scientific data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and other research sites in Europe. ESnet’s transatlantic extension will deliver a total capacity of 340 gigabits-per-second (Gbps), and serve dozens of scientific collaborations. To maximize the resiliency of the new infrastructure, ESnet equipment in Europe will be interconnected by dedicated 100 Gbps links from the pan-European networking organization GÉANT.

ESnet installed its first European network node at CERN (the major laboratory outside Geneva that houses the LHC) in mid-September, and is now deploying other equipment necessary to bring the first link online by October. The plan is for all links to be commissioned and in production by January 2015. The timing is important, because the LHC is undergoing upgrades and expected to resume operations next spring, at which point it will be generating significantly more scientific data every day.

Multi-Gigabit Commercial internet

In 2014, Google and Verizon were among the innovators announcing that they are testing the capabilities for currently installed fiber networks to carry data even more efficiently—at 10 gigabits per second—to businesses that handle large amounts of Internet traffic.

Google Fiber offers data transfer speeds of 1 gigabit per second currently but Google was already working on speeds of 10 gigabits per second in 2014. They are expected to deploy by 2017.

There were several cities in the world with 1 gbps internet from before 2014.

The top cities have gbps internet provided for less than US$40 per month.

US Internet announced Tuesday that it will use that network to offer 10-gigabit-per-pecond Internet speed, which is among the fastest Internet service available December, 2014. That’s 400 times faster than the average download speed in Minnesota, 25 megabits per second, according to Ookla, an Internet diagnostic firm.