Technology may stretch the capacity of the fibre optic cables used to carry data sooner than has long been thought, according to a report in Science...

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Interesting article.  Just when you thought it had all been figured out...

Indeed, if the internet keeps growing, more users and faster speeds then as the article says we will hit the limit, it might come down to limiting users bandwidth I guess at least until some new technology is thought up.

Even with a fibe optic limit you can put more fibre optics into the ground.

Taiwan has optic to the customer with 100Mbit. Easily done with current tech. At a cost of course. They had no copper network so fitted fibre from the start.
BT unfortunately, foots the cost of fibre in the ground but offcom says anyone can use it. So guess what, BT is starting to put fibre to the customer (or at least the DP (distribution point or green cabinet)) but should've started 10 years ago.

  Verizon which is my provider,  I use Dls which an improvement over the modem, offers fios which is a fiber optic technology.  It's used for phone, internet and tv.  Been out for ages but is still rather high priced.  Another company in the area uses the wired cable which is still expensive, it offers the phone, internet and tv. 
  I have a relative that uses the wired cable on a laptop, he is disabled and can't get to the computers in his basement.  I'd say the limiting factor is the laptop, the older p4 computers in the basement are faster than the laptop. 
   Interesting article,  I thought the servers entered into the speed you see though.
Carl2

Was just having a bit of a rant about BT being behind the mark with net speeds.

Cable (currently owned by Virgin) are the best in UK. I'm typical with the BT and other ISPs upto 8Mbit service with about 3.5Mbit (just been upgraded, was 3.3Mbit, woohoo).
They're rolling out upto 16-20Mbit but that only means 6-10 in the real world.

I want more now for less 

I class myself as one of the lucky ones being on Virgin cable, and recently Virgin has said they are going to double our up-load speed for free, its always good when they give you something for free. 

This is what im getting now, lets see if they stay true to their word and double it later.

They kept to their word; Virgin media have up-graded our up-load speed.

Everyone with Virgin cable, go check your speed...

Nice, that's about double what I get.  Most get a lot less than me. 

Yeah we are lucky, those of us on Virgin cable do get some great speeds, looking at the numbers Virgin have more than doubled the up-load speed, my guess is that those on 10Mb probably have 1Mb up now and those on 20Mb have 2Mb up.

Calling Diesel, has your speed increased too?

   Just checked, my up speed now, as you predicted, is just under 1Mb. However, I won't be changing my package just yet.

That's good then, the up-grade went ok, they didn't break anything  cant be bad.

Personally I think the Virgin 10Mb service is easily good enough, everyone I know on Virgin gets very close to the advertised speeds, all day every day, so I wouldn't change either. I'm only on the 20Mb after Virgin phoned me up and said I could have it for the price of the 10Mb, they did that because I have been on cable since it was Nynex, that has to be at least 15 years now, a loyalty thing.

Lets face it; Virgin cable is the best Internet provider in the UK .

Sounds that way.  I know it's good to have speed but you also have to consider how fast a web site can send you data.  I don't think there are many sites yet that serve at 20Mbs but I could be wrong.

I think it's maybe good for people like me that open about five windows at a time and flit back and forth all over the place.  With faster speeds I think it makes all that kind of thing a lot smoother.

The really great thing for speed though I have found recently is torrents.  I think that is where I have noticed the best speeds for me.

But whatever the case, in computing speed is king and it can't hurt to be ahead of the game.

Yeah it's the downloads when you really notice it, download an 8GB game from Steam while you have your lunch that kind of thing, and watching HD videos, stream 2 HD videos to 2 computers at the same time.

I agree with you Freddy most websites can't put out that kind of speed so for browsing you don't notice it much if at all.

In France, most people use an ADSL connection (internet by cable is available too, but not very popular).

In my case, I have an awesome speed after midnight (always over 14 Mbps), but really ugly in the afternoon. There are tons of speedtests on the net and they never give the same results. But we don't need a speedtest to know if it's good or not.

Of course, speed depends of the server we use and the place we are. Datahopa, your Speedtest is very useful for testing cities in Europe:

http://www.speedtest.net/

For USA, I like Speakeasy:

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

Interesting, there is a big difference between East and West coasts (usually, half). SL is supposed to be in San Francisco.