[jerf]

At this point I consider it a minor fringe benefit of being a network engineer that I realize there's hardly any point to going above 500Mb. There's a big price cliff there with my local provider, but... what would I do with that? Download a Steam game every other month slightly faster? Not worth over 70 bucks a month.

[danpalmer]

At some point these things become cheap enough that you might as well. The price difference between 500MB and 1GB for me is very little, and so for the peak usage time improvements and few times a month that I download a steam game or movie, it's worth it. I pay significantly less than 70 USD a month for my 1GB connection.

[computerdork]

Actually, think all the devs here should know this too (and am surprised people on HN are making such a big deal about this). Agreed, 500Mb is what most households need because, yeah, 90% of the time 4k video is the most demanding thing we do (which is only 25Mb/s per person in the household).

Having been telling this to my family and friends whenever they want to upgrade to 1Gb/s, but to noavail. They rarely ever take the suggestion (ah well, to each their own).

[thinkingemote]

Agreed. It's telling that the ads for speed upgrades all seem to focus on families: when all are uploading and streaming maybe at the same time. The marketeers know that 1 individuals and couples are not the target market and 2 they want everyone to be using as much as possible.

[computerdork]

those advertisers are crafty:)

[kevin_thibedeau]

I had an apartment once with both 300Mb cable and 1Gb fiber available. Cable was $40 and reliable with all the bandwidth I needed. The fiber sales reps would stop by a few times a year perplexed that I didn't want to pay through the nose for a bigger number. Moving away to a different location, I had to put up with a dodgy cable provider until cheap fiber was deployed and still don't need the extra bandwidth.