Will we be moaning about ‘only 500Mbit/s’ in 10 years’ time?

Yet, while TV ads are offering speeds of 40Mbit/s and more, it's somewhat galling for those in areas where broadband download rates are much less than that. The Findlay Media office isn't in some far flung area of the country, yet it's only recently that some of its staff have been able to get broadband rates in excess of 1Mbit/s.

But BT has started talking about bringing download rates of 500Mbit/s to 'most of' the country within the next 10 years. It is also planning to develop a premium fibre broadband service offering up to 1Gbit/s.

These data rates will be enabled by the application of G.fast technology and BT is looking to start two pilot trials of G.fast later this year. Alcatel-Lucent, however, has already tested the technology in Austria.

G.fast relies - like VDSL2 - on vectoring, a noise cancellation process that deals with crosstalk. Without vectoring, Alcatel-Lucent said G.fast ran at 50Mbit/s. When vectoring was applied, the magic figure of 500Mbit/s was reached.

In the past, such data rates could only have been achieved by fibre to the home - and the economics of such a revolution were not attractive. But G.fast runs over copper. The only restriction will be how close you are to the nearest distribution point.

A decade ago, you probably wouldn't have had a clue what you might do with 5Mbit/s broadband. But it's not enough for many today. In 10 years' time, is it possible we'll be moaning about the fact we 'only have 500Mbit/s broadband'?