Well... really? I mean, how much data do you need to be shovelled back and forth between the local macine and whatever? Unless you are back to terminals or XTerms or whatever, dumb machines that run everything, graphics included, over a network connection. Even then, 1 Gbaud or even 10 Gbaud can be run over copper, and the machine you are connectiong to is in a server room anyway, and this should be plenty good, right? I mean, giving each desk those network speeds and using them, what do you use in the server room? How do you satisfy the top data transfer needs of 24 or 48 users on the same switch?

But a telecom gear company will wnat to push that idea, so... yeah.

Agree, really dumb overkill.

I can only see one reason, very large access layer 480 port switches, just because fiber does not suffer the distance penalty copper does, and its thinner so a smaller trunk bunch next to the lift!!. This just simplifies the access layer, but the power draw would be horrendous, and we have a system that works fine now.

I may be wrong, but for the kind of bandwidth we're talking about I was under the impression that fibre power usage was less than ethernet

The more bandwidth the better, really.

Small flats in large residential towers -- the 21st Century 'normal' for Chinese cities. You have FTTR because there is only one 'room' to put it in. You don't install on the outside wall 15 floors up, and the garage, if there is one, is 15 floors down. You just fibre-wire the apartment building.

Unless your copper is dodgy but BT / Openreach will not do anything about it (has to be absolutely dire before they do something).

(My guess is there's a sheathing issue or iffy junction somewhere as connection invariably acts up after we have had a lot of rain and ground is quite moist)

.. and out in the sticks fibre, of any sort, is a distant dream!

Cat 8 cables have their own issues - like the need of proper grounding - and anyway at higher speed have short ranges - meaning they are good for the switch-device connection only.

The question is when people really need 25+ Gb/s links in each room in the foreseable future- especially if all you get are influencers informercials created with AIs.... wathing them at 1024k doesn't look a smart idea, but probably that will be what they will sell.

Every time I see something that mentions influencers, I wonder if someone has someone started up a youtube channel called "Why don't you stop watching streams on your phone and go and do something less boring instead?"

Don't look at me, I'm not going to do it. I'm off to the shops now to look for an electric monk to believe insane rubbish on the internet so I don't have to.

I'm off to the shops now to look for an electric monk to believe insane rubbish on the internet so I don't have to.

Save your money, you have most of US population to believe insane rubbish on the internet and more nonsense besides.

They manage to breed more than enough defective replacements for those who's beliefs and plain stupidity remove from the gene pool.

Indeed their supreme court, their federal and many state legislatures have criminalised any attempt to limit this gullibility breeding program. Idiots` R `US?

I am pretty sure Douglas Adams' Electric Monk would have baulked if he were expected to believe the current fœtid mountains of crap; likely suffering a blinding conversion becoming a complete nihilist.

"The question is when people really need 25+ Gb/s links in each room in the foreseable future"

It's about building a future-proof infrastructure when the opportunity presents itself, rather than wasting time and money on re-building everything every few years.

Look at how much money NBNCo has wasted re-building the network in Australia because HRH King Rupert decreed once upon a time that "FTTN is more than good enough."

Do it once, do it properly.

BTW, I'm pretty sure that "room" was mistranslated from "abode" - as in, a fibre link to each flat (apartment) in a block, not a link to each room therein.

of Hell.

A world of Uberserfs (delivery drivers) and "influencers."

The rest living existing in tiny ticky-tacky boxes with 1000 Gb/s connectivity presumably plugged into this digital Nirvana via some AliExpress neuralink knock offs.

I could imagine in a total surveillance state it might desirable to have fiber circuit switched networking back the local Stasi office before the traffic is disseminated over a packet switched backbone or potentially even a circuit switched backbone.

I supposed having an almost exclusively fiber network with hardened switches might be a sensible precautions if you were anticipating a Carrington Event or the use of EMP weapons.

Apparently there is a [1]sudden UK boom in the production of "vertical drama" - one-minute video episodes of tacky fiction shot cheaply in portrait format for consumption on mobile phones in China. Another brick in the dystopian wall.

Another reminder that evolution is about survival at any cost, not about improvement.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jun/22/a-new-space-to-play-in-can-vertical-dramas-save-the-uks-tv-sector

I have FTT-house. Guess I'm missing out with only Gigabit Ethernet once inside?

I feel my productivity would be vastly improved with FTTR, and wifi won't be an issue. I guess I'll forego the benefits of wireless, and just have a FTT-laptop?

A bright new future, indeed!

The problem with Fibre to the room infrastructure is that you then need an NTE that converts optical to electrical - and this needs power. And/or a wireless access point, which also needs power.

I have seen fibre to the room installations in the UK that also deliver TV signal (Sky and/or Freeview). All of the sudden you have three devices requiring power and a not very elegant in-room delivery.

PoE with 10Gbps delivery to a room should be sufficient in all but the most demanding deployments for a long time to come.

Realistic question - what equipment / application would be able to use this at line rate and what is the actual Internet feed to a building aggregating all of those connections? I suspect that most will top out at 10Gbps anyway.