Re: New minimum speed for US broadband connections

[Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa>]

On 6/1/21 19:14, Christopher Morrow wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 1, 2021 at 12:44 PM Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net 
> <mailto:nanog () ics-il net>> wrote:
>
>     That is true, but if no one uses it, is it really gone?
>
>
>
> There's an underlying, I think, assumption that people won't use 
> access speed/bandwidth that keeps coming up.
> I don't think this is an accurate assumption. I don't think it's 
> really ever been accurate.

Put another way, folk will use more bandwidth, up to a point.

You are more likely to see sustained increases if someone is jumping 
from, say, 1Mbps, to, say, 100Mbps (and everything else in between).

After that, sustained use if you deliver 500Mbps, 1Gbps, 5Gbps or 10Gbps 
is not likely to follow the same curve as when they jumped off the 1Mbps 
train (personal usage patterns notwithstanding, of course).

When I had 25Mbps symmetrical, it was night & day when we moved to 
100Mbps symmetrical. Steady state for us (2 kids, 2 adults, the 
occasional guest) was between 40Mbps - 70Mbps.

We now have 200Mbps symmetrical, and our steady state remains the same. 
The additional capacity does help when we need to quickly upload and 
download large bits, but that's the exception, not the rule.

That's why selling 1Gbps symmetrical on GPON is great marketing :-).

Mark.