[MaxBarraclough]

I made very similar points 6 days ago. [0] Personally I get almost no benefit from 100mbps over 40Mbps, or perhaps even 25. Huge downloads are rare events, and often aren't time-critical. Backups and automatic updates don't generally need to be fast.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26553690

[Nursie]

> Huge downloads are rare events, and often aren't time-critical.

But if you have access to high speeds, behaviour changes. I can play that game pretty much now, rather than later or tomorrow, so maybe I will, rather than think about whether I want to later, maybe, or if I should just do something else.

[MaxBarraclough]

That's a good point. If it's really fast, then it becomes a 'non-event'. Clicking 'Install' and 'Run' start to converge.

For me though, installing a game is a rare event, and that's not just due to the inconvenience and delay. If 40Mbps is appreciably cheaper than 100, I'll take 40.

[Nursie]

Thats fair enough, all comes down to your usage patterns!

I think once you've gone past enough for the household's streaming needs - multiply each person by two 4K streams in case they have the tv on and a video on their phone, and a bit extra for music, always-on devices, browsing etc - you really are only looking at "burst" capacity, and whether it matters to you to get the big things fast.

OTOH it's becoming a bit of a moot point here - with 900/900 available for £25 (~$34) per month, why not?

[C4stor]

Well, my initial point wasn't that bandwidth is _bad_, it isn't, but rather that the fact that ISPs got everyone, apparently including lawmakers to focus on it isn't good for our actual usages, where latency and its stability are the primary drivers or perceived performance.

It's no wonder, since bandwidth has ample room for easy improvement, while providing a good and stable ping is actually a bit difficult. But I still find it heavily biased, and a bit sad.

[Nursie]

You're not wrong - I think we need both, modern usage patterns are already soaking up bandwidth in not-particularly-ping-sensitive applications like video streaming, but other uses absolutely do demand quality of connection and low latency.

[MaxBarraclough]

> all comes down to your usage patterns

Right on. I think for most people the 'ceiling' is probably something like 25Mbps. I suspect that few households ever try to run multiple 4K video streams.

When we discuss improving Internet infrastructure, the emphasis should be on ensuring everyone has access to at least 25Mbps, rather than on further improving Internet speeds in places where there's already an acceptable service.

[Nursie]

> I think for most people the 'ceiling' is probably something like 25Mbps.

That's one 4K stream and no slack. Fine for a single person, maybe. But even for just the two of us, if I'm watching a UHD stream on netflix/amazon and she's upstairs playing a game and watching twitch, that's not enough. A family with kids is going to struggle to enjoy modern services on that, and that's before we get into larger downloads.

That's really not enough for a household in 2021, and I see no virtue in trying to 'make do' here.

> the emphasis should be on ensuring everyone has access to at least 25Mbps

I would be surprised if (here in the UK) there were many places you couldn't already.

According to figures I can find from 2019, we were at 53% having access to 300Mbps+, 42% with access to 30-300, 4.5% with only 10-30 and 0.5% under that, which is pretty good going. That lowest 5% are clearly lagging and in need of modernising, but I don't think it's wrong to say we can improve it for the 42% as well, especially as the network we roll out now is the network that forms usage patterns over the next several years. It's not just about right now.

[MaxBarraclough]

Fair points.

I wonder if 5G could help with the 'last mile' problem, regarding serving sparsely populated areas economically. It's fast enough to be used for home broadband.