[woodruffw]

> Assuming that HD video would be the most data-intensive thing

I think this is the wrong assumption to make. I have a 30mbps-ish plan right now, and I can slow my apartment's connection down to a crawl by initiating a large download.

25mbps might be enough for a family of four whose connections are consistent, but I'd wager that the average home's traffic is more on the bursty side.

[Clubber]

I would assume he meant cumulatively. It's a safe assumption that most households watch video way more than they download 4GB files.

[rhino369]

That could be solved with better QoS on the router right?

Obviously a download from a good server will saturate a 100mbps line, but so what? Other than video games and massive file backups, 25mbit is fairly fast. I pay for faster, but it's only a marginal improvement.

[woodruffw]

Better QoS on consumer routers would definitely help, but it's not a panacea -- ballooning website sizes also lead to bursty network conditions, and I wouldn't be surprised if my router's QoS is configured to prioritize HTTP(S) connections. Same goes for automatic updates.

Edit: I meant to add this:

We have the ability to provide (or at least develop) 100mbps connections to the vast majority of Americans, and we recognize that Internet transfers aren't getting any smaller. It's good to look at ways to improve the status quo (e.g., QoS), but we should also be looking to change the status quo itself.

[mhays]

Your edit is essentially the point of my original post. Yes, if we can get 100mbps for the vast majority of Americans, that would be awesome. But, if the vast majority of Americans would be fine right now with 10-15-20mbps, wouldn't it be better to analyze our national broadband capabilities based on that benchmark? From what I understand, 100mbps is overkill, so why use that as a benchmark?

I come at this with the thinking that, it's not "us" that's building out the infrastructure, but the telco companies. So, really what we are doing is analyzing the build-outs telcos are doing, and judging whether it is good enough or not. Is it really fair to say that, if there aren't 3+ telcos providing 100mbps, but there are 3+ providing 15mbps, that's not good enough?

[woodruffw]

Well, I disagree that the vast majority of Americans are fine with 10/15/20mbps. They might get by with it, but I'm sure they notice their streams buffer or drop in quality when they do (or their system does) something bursty.

In light of the obscene amount of money that taxpayers have sunk into ISPs, there's no need for that. They may be the ones building the infrastructure, but they're taking advantage of us along the way.