Post 10Gbps Fibre internet -- 25Gbps and 50Gbps

[xiaofan]

Updated on 5 Jan 2026

https://www.singtel.com/about-us/me...gapore-to-pilot-50gbps-fibre-broadband-for-ai

05 Jan 2026
News Release
Singtel first in Singapore to pilot 50Gbps fibre broadband to prepare homes and businesses for AI

50Gbps XGS-PON technology supports next-generation mixed reality, cloud gaming, remote work and AI-driven digital lifestyles

Singapore, 5 January 2026 – Singtel today announced the launch of its 50Gbps XGS-PON fibre broadband technical trial, the first in Singapore. Designed to support ultra-immersive augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality experiences, cloud gaming, and AI-enabled smart homes and businesses, the 50Gbps XGS-PON broadband ensures customers are ready to adopt these emerging technologies, new devices and applications, that are expected to be widely available over the next three to five years.

...

--- Original post on 7 Sept 2024 ---
Oops, Singapore loses to Hong Kong already.
HKBN Collaborates with Nokia to Launch Hong Kong’s first 25Gbps Enterprise and Residential Broadband Service
https://www.hkbn.net/group/en/newsroom/press-releases/20240605-25Gfibre
https://cloud.e.hkbn.net/25G-broadband-lead-en

 

[xiaofan]

Nerd ISPs like Init7 in Switzerland already provides 25Gbps services for a few years. But probably SG/HK will not have such small "nerd ISPs".
CHF 64.75/month for 25Gbps is not bad, about S$100 per month for 25Gbps service.
https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/
https://ripe84.ripe.net/presentations/73-RIPE84_20220518_25G_OneYear.pdf

 

[xiaofan]

Nokia is actively promoting 25G PON and 50G PON. HKBN is also using Nokia technology to launch 25Gbps service.
https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news...celerate-multi-gigabit-broadband-deployments/
https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news...pon-speeds-over-live-fiber-broadband-network/

Google FIbre 20G trial with WiFi 7
https://fiber.google.com/gfiber-labs/20gig/

 

[xiaofan]

US ISP deploying 25Gbps service to residential customers (not trial like Google Fibre 20Gbps service), very expensive though.
https://epb.com/campaigns/25-gig/

 

[Henry Ng]

Nokia is actively promoting 25G PON and 50G PON. HKBN is also using Nokia technology to launch 25Gbps service.
https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news...celerate-multi-gigabit-broadband-deployments/
https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news...pon-speeds-over-live-fiber-broadband-network/

Google FIbre 20G trial with WiFi 7
https://fiber.google.com/gfiber-labs/20gig/

HK trial launched but many old apartments can not support it yet. Sg still got chance. See their confirmed plan is 5Gbps and not 10Gbps plan yet. No home user will be willing to pay. See this >
https://www.hkbn.net/personal/broadband/en
If Sg trial, I sign up.

 

[xiaofan]

HK trial launched but many old apartments can not support it yet. Sg still got chance. See their confirmed plan is 5Gbps and not 10Gbps plan yet. No home user will be willing to pay. See this >
https://www.hkbn.net/personal/broadband/en
If Sg trial, I sign up.

It is not a trial, it is a commercial launch, just not available to all the places in HK.

 

[BBCWatcher]

And nobody can push even a fraction of what we already have over Wi-Fi, especially in Singapore's urban jungle. Increasing notional "bragging rights" line speeds is fine I suppose, but I'd much rather see improvements we can actually use. Like lower latency, better peering, better international connectivity, improved reliability, reduced bufferbloat, public IP addresses (at least IPv6, and a /56 please — even a /58 would be OK if an ISP must), ONTs or at least bridged ONRs, smarter/better Wi-Fi (how about dynamic channel widths — channel widths that continuously adjust based on the wireless environment?), and improved security and confidentiality (such as support for DNS over HTTPS and DNS over TLS in DHCP standards).

 

[Henry Ng]

And nobody can push even a fraction of what we already have over Wi-Fi, especially in Singapore's urban jungle. Increasing notional "bragging rights" line speeds is fine I suppose, but I'd much rather see improvements we can actually use. Like lower latency, better peering, better international connectivity, improved reliability, reduced bufferbloat, public IP addresses (at least IPv6, and a /56 please — even a /58 would be OK if an ISP must), ONTs or at least bridged ONRs, smarter/better Wi-Fi (how about dynamic channel widths — channel widths that continuously adjust based on the wireless environment?), and improved security and confidentiality (such as support for DNS over HTTPS and DNS over TLS in DHCP standards).

You are right. Some of them, we already can get, some improvements we will get in future. New undersea cables are coming. 25G will come with better latency. I hope to see more UHD HDR TV contents too. But will be very expensive.

 

[BBCWatcher]

25G will come with better latency.

Not really. Latency to France (for example) isn't going to depend on the notional line speed into the home. It depends primarily on international peering, routing, and backbones. And whether that traffic is managed sensibly or not.

I hope to see more UHD HDR TV contents.

8K HEVC (H.265) video "only" requires about 100 Mb/s (somewhat less actually), and H.265 isn't even that great these days. You could have 2 home viewers with simultaneous 8K video streams running over a 500 Mb/s line drop (which isn't even sold any more in Singapore to new subscribers) and still have PLENTY of capacity left over for Web browsing, audio streaming, Zoom meetings, email, etc.

 

[xiaofan]

Different things.

Infrastructure needs to go earlier. That is why NLT Fibre infrastructure is already ready for 10G or 25G service. Then the ISPs need to catch up. The real application will lag behind.

Similar for 5G and 6G mobile.

 

[xiaofan]

And we can always argue that 500Mbps is enough, that does not prevent ISPs to phase out 500Mbps services to new users. M1 is the last one to do it.

Soon we may see 1Gbps services (M1 and Starhub Homehub+ 1Gbps) gone. Then after that GPON based 2Gbps / 2.5Gbps services.

Eventually all GPON based services will be gone. Maybe WC 2.5Gbps will be the last one.

 

[BBCWatcher]

Different things.

Infrastructure needs to go earlier. That is why NLT Fibre infrastructure is already ready for 10G or 25G service. Then the ISPs need to catch up. The real application will lag behind.

Similar for 5G and 6G mobile.

Sure, but in-home line speeds are not really a limiting factor for real-world applications, nor will they be any time soon. Put another way, how many 8K H.265 video streams can a typical (or even atypical) home view at one time?

....But I think there might be some argument with large downloads (and uploads) if that's your thing. Currently the #1 largest commercial video game is about one quarter terabyte in size. At 900 Mb/s (what you can probably average on a wired 1.0 Gb/s home Internet service, and assuming you're not limited upstream with hordes of other gamers trying to get the same title on release day) that'll take about 37 minutes to download. Double the size of the video game and it'll take about 74 minutes. Will a future gamer downloading the future largest video game wait about an hour? I guess that depends on one's point of view. But many people, even gamers, would answer that question "Yes" if it means saving $5/month for example. (This math also excludes the possibility of staged downloading. That is, the game might be perfectly playable for hours once an initial download has completed, and while the remainder of the game is downloading.)

 

[BBCWatcher]

And we can always argue that 500Mbps is enough, that does not prevent ISPs to phase out 500Mbps services to new users. M1 is the last one to do it.

Yeah, and that's sad actually. This might be a role for government to nudge the private sector into offering a standardized "basic Internet" service at least to seniors age 60+. Much like they already do with mobile phone service, although maybe that's enough.

I think I'm going to keep my "legacy" 500 Mb/s plan (with bridged ONR and public IPv4 address, and a reasonable monthly rate) as long as possible. Because a lot of the "new" service plans are downgrades in many respects. (CGNAT? Yuck!) I'm not going to even approach driving Wi-Fi harder than a fraction of 500 Mb/s any time soon in this urban jungle. Stable Wi-Fi with excellent whole home coverage is absolutely fine, even if it's not a bragging number.

However, if I had to switch ISPs now I'd probably go with M1's $36.90/month plan. It ticks all the boxes.

Soon we may see 1Gbps services (M1 and Starhub Homehub+ 1Gbps) gone. Then after that GPON based 2Gbps / 2.5Gbps services.

Yup. Which is acceptable as long as the monthly rates are reasonable and the service itself is good (ONT or bridged ONR, and at least public /56 or /58 IPv6).

Eventually all GPON based services will be gone. Maybe WC 2.5Gbps will be the last one.

But it seems WhizComms doesn't bridge their ONRs any more.

 

[xiaofan]

Sure, but in-home line speeds are not really a limiting factor for real-world applications, nor will they be any time soon. Put another way, how many 8K H.265 video streams can a typical (or even atypical) home view at one time?

....But I think there might be some argument with large downloads (and uploads) if that's your thing. Currently the #1 largest commercial video game is about one quarter terabyte in size. At 900 Mb/s (what you can probably average on a wired 1.0 Gb/s home Internet service, and assuming you're not limited upstream with hordes of other gamers trying to get the same title on release day) that'll take about 37 minutes to download. Double the size of the video game and it'll take about 74 minutes. Will a future gamer downloading the future largest video game wait about an hour? I guess that depends on one's point of view. But many people, even gamers, would answer that question "Yes" if it means saving $5/month for example. (This math also excludes the possibility of staged downloading. That is, the game might be perfectly playable for hours once an initial download has completed, and while the remainder of the game is downloading.)

Not my thing. I only need 500Mbps other than SpeedTest where I like to be more than 2.5Gbps.

We all know that latency will be more important for international locations, but that is mostly out of the control of local ISPs (other than paying better upstream transit providers). And it can be very expensive and not practical for consumer internet plans (eg: low latency to China). And for location like US, it just can not be so low latency due to the sheer distance and the speed limit of light in Fibre.

In the end, the government is pushing for 10Gbps service and anticipate that there will be some killer applications coming out which need high bandwidth within SG. Let's see if that would happen in 2028 or 2030.

 

[Henry Ng]

Not my thing. I only need 500Mbps other than SpeedTest where I like to be more than 2.5Gbps.

We all know that latency will be more important for international locations, but that is mostly out of the control of local ISPs (other than paying better upstream transit providers). And it can be very expensive and not practical for consumer internet plans (eg: low latency to China). And for location like US, it just can not be so low latency due to the sheer distance and the speed limit of light in Fibre.

In the end, the government is pushing for 10Gbps service and anticipate that there will be some killer applications coming out which needs high bandwidth within SG. Let's see if that would happen in 2028 or 2030.

SH has do away 1Gbps plan so M1 500Mbps will one day do away.

 

[xiaofan]

From the other thread.
https://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/...-simba-and-vq.6930337/page-229#post-153651579

But then again maybe 25G would work out in the end since sfp28 is very common while sfp56 is a quite rare. And SingTel can offer a ridiculous 20G aggregated plan with two 10G lines.

Actually 20Gbps services (aggregated 20Gbps or dual 10Gbps) may well be popular as you will have an ONR or ONT with 25G Fibre uplink and then two 10G RJ45 (or SFP+) LAN ports.

Nokia 25G ONT: with 10G/25G Ethernet port.
https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news...celerate-multi-gigabit-broadband-deployments/

Maybe Singtel 20G ONR will have three or four 10G RJ45 Ethernet ports (aggregated 20G plan). M1 20G ONT will have dual 10G LAN ports (dual 10G plan). Starhub will have both options.

 

[BBCWatcher]

In the end, the government is pushing for 10Gbps service and anticipate that there will be some killer applications coming out which needs high bandwidth within SG. Let's see if that would happen in 2028 or 2030.

I don't have any objection to "future proofing" national data transmission infrastructure and international backbones. I just think the home broadband "my number is bigger than your number" marketing is utterly silly, especially if/as ISPs degrade their offerings in other ways.

 

[Henry Ng]

Not really. Latency to France (for example) isn't going to depend on the notional line speed into the home. It depends primarily on international peering, routing, and backbones. And whether that traffic is managed sensibly or not.

8K HEVC (H.265) video "only" requires about 100 Mb/s (somewhat less actually), and H.265 isn't even that great these days. You could have 2 home viewers with simultaneous 8K video streams running over a 500 Mb/s line drop (which isn't even sold any more in Singapore to new subscribers) and still have PLENTY of capacity left over for Web browsing, audio streaming, Zoom meetings, email, etc.

Must understand how many will connect to France. It will not make sense to enhance connection to Europe countries. It will be better for websites to have local CDN la.

 

[xiaofan]

SH has do away 1Gbps plan so M1 500Mbps will one day do away.

You are outdated. M1 has already removed 500Mbps services to new customers. as of yesterday.
https://shop.m1.com.sg/home-broadband

SH still has Homehub+ 1Gbps service (but may be gone soon).
https://www.starhub.com/personal/bundles/homehub-plus/1gbps.html

 

[seowbin]

Different things.

Infrastructure needs to go earlier. That is why NLT Fibre infrastructure is already ready for 10G or 25G service. Then the ISPs need to catch up. The real application will lag behind.

Similar for 5G and 6G mobile.

NLT infra is those layer 1 connectivity. Technology is the limitation.


Now should have those 50g pon if based on fiber splitter.

If don't based on fiber splitter, 100g or more dedicated also possible.

When I sell to my customer, tell them 10g is the minimum. People still asking got 5g or not

To me, nowadays local bandwidth is as good as unlimited. Don't need to cap if it's within own infra especially nowadays switches are line rate at 10g, 100g and even 400g