Once gigabit is in perhaps 25% of homes and businesses, everyone else will want it, too, and a tipping point will have been reached. I'm guessing it will take

Once gigabit is in perhaps 25% of homes and businesses, everyone else will want it, too, and a tipping point will have been reached. I'm guessing it will take that large a market for the really cool apps to become practical and well known: remote desktops and thin clients that serve up high def TV/movies and real-time high quality video telephone (finally). This will be when television and computers finally converge and we will stop thinking of them as separate and different products. I have to admire Google. They not only envisioned this, but (as usual) very smartly went about implementing a demo. The "fiberhood" approach makes sense; it's the right way to roll out the service (or any non-essential service, really). Make money on neighborhood #1, and that pays for the rollout to neighborhood #2, and so forth. The whole "either everyone gets it or no one gets it" approach goes out the window, and suddenly, every town wants it. Certainly it will have to be provided to "under-served" areas but the important thing is for there to be a solid business model, preferably with competing providers, else all the problems of a utility-quasi-monopoly come into play: indifferent customer service and support, uneven service quality, etc. I can't wait until this comes to my town, just outside of Boston, but for various reasons I suspect Mass. will be among the last places to get it. Anyway--congratulations to those who have it, and just don't rub it in!!