Google's head of access programs in India - Azar says, that each station has "1Gbps plus backhaul through fiber". Any googler here? It would be interesting to know how google employed VSAT & SDN technologies to connect 100 different railway stations in 12 months.
Google works with a subsidiary of the Railways called RailTel. A lot of the infrastructure / backbone was supplied by RailTel which allowed the project to move fast.
Which place are you referring to in your statement that consumers can get 1Gbps to their house? The highest consumer grade speeds available in many cities is around 100Mbps, and that's not available everywhere either. Most connections come to 2Mbps or even lower (depends on the ISP and the location).
Google fiber is the most widely known. All other examples I've seen have been municipal fiber or small local ISPs.
My point is that 1gbps is trivial and doesn't require special technology. All the servers I work with now have either 10gb or 40gb cards. 1gb to every desktop on a campus is common.
