They don't stream faster than 5Mb/s, but they sure as hell will buffer data at 1Gb/s. It doesn't take long to get a 10-30sec buffer at 1Gb/s when the underlying stream is only encoded at 5Mb/s.

All I know is people complain about FiOS TV services pixelating when using high bandwidth Internet apps. I don't have FiOS, I have an actual dedicated fiber connection where the ISP does not oversubscribe and make sure there are no choke points, unlike Verizon and their "I'm getting 60KB/s to AWS, but when I use a VPN, I get 4.5MB/s". Verizon is crap, but some people get lucky.

If you compare population densities of cities, it's about the same, or more dense in the USA.

The mean usage is quite low. Look at Netflix, 10Tb/s of peak bandwidth and 50mil customers. That's an average of 200kb/s per customer, yet their average streamer consumes about 3Mb/s. This means that only 1 in 15 Netflix customers are using Netflix at any given time during the busy hours. Netflix is 1/3 of all bandwidth being used of the entire USA internet. With about 100mil households in the USA with an Internet connection, and peak USA bandwidth of about 30Tb/s, that means the average house uses about 300Kb/s or (1/3)Mb/s. The average USA Internet connection is about 10Mb/s. That means, on average, each customer only uses about 3% of their connection speed.

On average, going from 10Mb/s to 1Gb/s increase the average usage by about 10%. This means that those "heavy" users, who can saturate their 1gb/s connection 24/7, make almost no difference on the whole.

If you like cows, beer, -40f winters, and good Internet, this is the place for you. If you want a "city" life of any kind, this is not the place for you.

That's actually really bad response times. GPON has response times in the 0.4ms ranges.

FCC proposing to Congress for broadband to be defined as 25/3.

You're getting 56/67 on your 50/50 because FiOS TV services share bandwidth with your Internet. For whatever reason, FiOS can't break these services over separate VLANs or can't keep bandwidth separate between VLANS, whatever they're doing. You can even find people, as of 2015, having issues when hammering their Internet, their DVR or TV functions start having pixelation issues. My ISP gives me 50/50, and I get exactly 50/50, well, something like 49.8 in practice. IPTV comes over a separate VLAN, which has separate bandwidth allocations.

Yay, Verizon. I still read about issues with Verizon peering and random problems with AWS, Akamai, Netflix, YouTube, and others. You might have gotten lucky, but many around the nation have issues trying to get 1Mb/s from their 50Mb connection. At least the speed test is good.

For every person using 1Gb/s, there will be 1,000 other people using 0Mb/s. It averages out. Kind of like insurance. For every person that needs $10mil in special treatment, there's 100,000 other people just getting their yearly check-up for $200.

Which is funny, because Verizon's own CEO said that FiOS increased revenue as people were more likely to purchase more services with FiOS, plus support costs are cheaper, plus lower long-term upgrade costs.

I can get a 70/70(dedicated) for $70, about $73 once you include tax, and you bill won't change. It was $70 when it was a 1.5Mb DSL line back in 2003, it was $70 when it was 30Mb four years ago when they installed fiber, and it's still $70 today. All upgrades are 100% free in every way.

The simplest calculation tends to be the most correct. We almost always start out with something complex, and as we find out more information, we can simplify the equation. The more complex something is, the more likely it is to be "brittle".

Virtual particles do impart force. My understanding is that it is a net of zero, Universe wide, but maybe not locally. Virtual particles can push two plates together, and create torque issues with nano-structures.

You make a huge assumption that most people are rational, they are not.

More than 5. Still at my first job.