Before we can experience 3D virtual sex with true life-like realism, or have high-definition hologram girls dancing naked in our living rooms, it’s commonly accepted that we need a major leap forward in internet speeds. Such speeds will be needed in order to handle the real-time data downloading required for true high-defintion interraction. Encouragingly, signs are that such a breakthrough is just around the corner. Verizon, which has been predicting 3D hologram tv in the next 5 – 10 years, requiring 1 gbps broadband, announced this week that it has been successfully testing speeds of up to a staggering 10 giga bits per second – for both downloads AND uploads, using a new technology called XG-PON2.
To put this into perspective, the current roll-outs of ‘super-fast’ broadband, which few people yet enjoy, usually consist of maximum speeds of 100 mega bits per second. That means that the speeds that Verizon are testing are 100 times faster than super-fast, and over 1,000 times faster than the broadband speeds that the vast majority of people enjoy today.
