I've discussed this with several of my friends. In our area, we have multiple providers and can get up to 100MB down/ 30 up with residential service. (You can get all you want if you pay business prices, I work at a company that sells that).
30/5 is the standard. So what would we do with more bandwidth?
Netflix streams in high def. Games from Steam download quickly. My Voip phone works well.
In the future, I'm assuming we will find a use for more bandwidth, but right now, I cannot justify paying for a higher bandwidth connection. (I wouldn't complain if they upgraded our speed for the same price.)
What am I missing? What _could_ I be doing with more bandwidth (besides pirating the entire output of Hollywood and the music and gaming industry)?
By extension then, what argument do we use to force/persuade ISPs and the government (who pays for a lot of infrastructure [2], especially in rural areas) to increase speeds to end users, while maintaining an affordable price structure?
I'm looking for honest answers, I'm not trolling, I promise :-)
[1] Assuming that you already have a relatively fast, stable connection now (somewhere in the 30mb download and 5mb upload range).
[2] BTOP http://www2.ntia.doc.gov/ My father lives on a farm 18 miles from the nearest town. He has fiber.