I am one of the fortunate ones — I have enjoyed the fiber-connected life for nearly 11 years, four of which have been blessed by a gigabit/second connection. The bi-directional gigabit speed has been a blessing. That speed has come in handy during the pandemic — I am nearly always on Zoom and using the network for staying connected, entertained, and informed. This need for speed and stability has seen the demand go up. 

According to OpenVault, a market research firm, nearly 4.9% of the US households have a gigabit/second connection, versus 2.81 percent of all US households at the end of 2019. If we end 2020 with over 7 million gigabit households, it would be a pretty big deal. To give it context, China added 10.3 million fiber connections in Q2 alone. Still, I hope this encourages more small fiber networks to be spun-up to compete with the dominant incumbents, especially in what FastCompany calls: the Zoom Towns.

 “We are finally getting to the point when it’s reasonable to talk about developing giant bandwidth applications,” writes Doug Dawson. “The most obvious candidate product for using giant bandwidth is telepresence.” My best guess is that it would be something more prosaic and basic.

For cues, I looked at high-bandwidth countries like South Korea and China. Just like in Asia, streaming influencers will become huge in the US, and many, if not most, will be on Twitch. And their focus will be on commerce — rather, e-commerce. And that is good news for Amazon, which is becoming even more entrenched in retail-oriented commerce. Now you understand why Walmart wants a piece of TikTok.