How fast is a gigabit Internet connection

Click here for more info on Longmont's Gigabit network

 

I've moved to Australia to help entrepreneurs grow their companies at The Centre for Business Growth at the University of South Australia, and I'm having a great time.  Last week I was asked to get involved in a movement to bring faster internet to Adelaide and South Australia.  I'm sure my name came up because I've talked so much about how Longmont, Colorado was able to bring gigabit internet to the city.  The day I was leaving to go to the airport back in May, a Longmont NextlLight installer showed up and said they were ready to install it at my house, so I missed out on it.  I was just days away from having a gigabit up, and down, for $49 a month USD.  And to be clear, that's how fast the connection is, not how much data you get per month.  Here in Australia many plans are capped so they advertise the cap and rarely talk about how fast the connection actually is.  Because so many people are still on ADSL2+, it varies from a single megibit, to maybe 10 megabits.

Now here's the problem.  If you've never had high-speed internet, you don't know what you're missing.  When Longmont was still in the process of building out the network, my friend Scott Converse showed a bunch of us at Startup Longmont this video to help us understand just how fast a gigabit really is.

This video starts out showing how fast a slow ADSL2+ connection is here in Australia, and moves on to a full gigabit.

In future posts I'll talk about why it is vital for a city to have high-speed internet if they want to have a startup ecosystem and participate in the next wave of business growth.  Adelaide is a wonderful city and I don't want to see it get left behind, so I'm really happy to be here and have a chance to help.  In future posts I'll talk about why fast internet is important, and why it's about so much more than just being able to stream NetFlix without pauses.  It's about building new kinds of businesses and creating jobs, and fostering innovation.  Australia is all about fostering innovation, so we have to have faster internet here.