re: Holy Cow! Just signed up for gigabit service in Chattanooga, TN

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A lot of people don't realize that it only takes around 6.7mbps bandwidth to stream HD video from Netflix. 4k can be accomplished with 25mbps.

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And it seems a lot of people don't realize that those bit rates are the result of highly compressed streams, which are the result of the average household having relatively low bandwidth. Surely, we want to eventually (if not very soon) see our fancy new 4K TVs (or hell, even our 1080p TVs) truly shine with high-bitrate, low-artifact streaming media, rather than cling onto physical media as our only way to get the highest fidelity (compressed 4K streams really aren't distinguishable from 1080p blu-ray). Personally, I want a reason to buy a big-arse 4K TV on which I won't spend 80-90% of my time watching 720p/1080i broadcast or even a compressed netflix stream.

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In 5 years we will definitely be tapping into that bandwidth though so I hope everyone gets fiber. As far as 10gig goes for residential use? It'll be a while.

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Yep, but personally I don't see why it shouldn't be sooner than that. As Kork said, when we get it, we will be damn sure to find ways to use it. The possibilities already exist; it's just that the benefits can't realized without the infrastructure, which can't exist without demand. And I agree about 10gig being ahead of its time in consumer space, since even the top consumer routers can't quite deliver 1gbps WAN to LAN, but we don't want to discourage its existence and fall into the trap of complacency of "adequate" bandwidth for what we do now... Unless we're OK with the way most of the big ISPs are treating us now.

We want the idea of an uncapped internet faucet to be move from novelty status to something more commonplace. The key here is bandwidth, not speed. IoT is the future. I'm actually lagging behind in that regard. Ask CAD how many internet-connected devices are in his house.