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."
