Thanks in part to Google Fiber, 1-Gig residential broadband connections is now the bar. Salisbury, a city in North Carolina, looks to raise it today with the debut of a 10 Gbps service that’s being offered through Fibrant, a municipally-owned provider.

The plan is to offer 10-gig to all premises in the city, thought the service is initially being offered at Catawba College, and being powered by the Calix E5-520 Ethernet Service Access Node (ESAN). The first location to get it at the school is Hoke Hall, with plans to extend it to other campus buildings such as the Cannon Student Center and Ralph W. Ketner Hall. The 10-Gig  service, expected to be of the most use to businesses customers, will be offered to residential customers for about $400 per month, Ars Technica said.

Fibrant, which initially rolled out 1-Gig with Calix last year, said its network can currently delivers up to 10 Gbps using point-to-point Ethernet technology today, but plans to transition to a next-gen PON platform (XGS-PON and NG-PON2) as it becomes available in 2016.

Verizon recently announced it had successfully tested NG-PON2 FTTP technology (with Cisco Systems and  PT Inovação) that could “easily provide” symmetrical speeds of 10 Gbps.Meanwhile, VTel launched a 10-Gig service in June that complements its $35 per month 1 Gbps offering. VTel said it’s 10-Gig residential offering was made possible by a $85 million network award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service. 

DOCSIS 3.1, cable’s emerging next-gen HFC IP platform, is targeting max capacities of 10 Gbps down and at least 1 Gbps upstream.

"In making the leap to multi-gigabit services for key anchor institutions and businesses, Fibrant has set a new bar for communities across America,” said John Colvin, SVP of North American Sales at Calix, in a statement. “As next generation PON technologies come to market in 2016, we are excited to see how smaller businesses, MDU (multiple dwelling unit) owners, and even single family residences take advantage of these impressive speeds and enjoy the next wave of broadband innovation."

Verizon said it has successfully tested NG-PON2 FTTP technology that, it claims, could “easily provide” symmetrical speeds of 10 Gbps to business and residential customers.

The telco, which is currently offering up to 500 Mbps up and down on its residential FiOS high-speed Internet platform, said the next-gen PON tech likewise will “open the door” to a blistering 80 Gbps.

Verizon said the trial conducted with a NG-PON2 equipment system from Cisco and PT Inovação at the telco’s central in Framingham, Mass., to a FiOS customer’s home three miles away, as well as to a nearby business location.

The trial used a new optical line terminal (OLT) installed at the central office that pumped out four wavelengths that was each capable of operating at 10 Gbps down by 2.5 Gbps up. Future versions will support symmetrical 10G per color, the company said.

Verizon noted that upgrades on the FTTP network will start when commercial equipment is available to support business offerings such as switched Ethernet services. The telco plans to issue a request for proposals later this year for the hardware and software needed for a new NG-PON2 platform.

While 10-Gig “would be most attractive for business customers,” Verizon said that picture will change for consumers amid the adoption of 4K video and the expected explosion of the so-called Internet of Things, which will generate demand for higher symmetrical speeds and lower latencies.

“The advantage of our FiOS network is that it can be upgraded easily by adding electronics onto the fiber network that is already in place,” Verizon VP of network technology Lee Hicks said, in a statement, “Deploying this exciting new technology sets a new standard for the broadband industry and further validates our strategic choice of fiber-to-the-premises.”

The field trial, the telco said, validated an important service reliability feature of NG-PON2 – it simulated a fault in the central office equipment, but the ONT restored its own 10G service “in seconds” by autonomously  tuning to another wavelength.

According to Hicks, NG-PON2 will have the system capacity to grow to 40 Gbps to 80 Gbps, by adding new colors of light onto the existing fiber. Each new color beefs up the capacity by up to 10 Gbps.

The new technology could raise the stakes in the broadband game. Thanks in part to pressure being applied by Google Fiber, the high-end benchmark for residential broadband is 1 Gbps.  Comcast, meanwhile, has begun to offer 2 Gbps residential service via its targeted, FTTP-based “Gigabit Pro” product.

DOCSIS 3.1, an emerging platform for HFC networks, is aiming for capacities of 10 Gbps down and at least 1  Gbps downstream.