It is impossible to do what I do even when I paid $140 a month for their “Pro” version. (I hit the cap almost immediately on their $70 month version!) Read the answers I got when I escalated the problems to their “Executive Customer Care” people:
* We aren’t supposed to EVER open more than one tab at a time
* They never claimed their service would work for filling out forms on the Internet on sites like Yahoo Local or Google Maps
* That even if I couldn’t use the Internet there was absolutely nothing wrong – I should just “wait a few hours and try again”

If THAT is where this is going, intelligent Internet users are in for deep problems. If you only open one tab at a time and don’t actually DO anything online besides wander around it might work – maybe – but no YouTube or other videos, no downloading large files, and you will have to install software or update your operating system in the middle of the night.

The plutocracy appears to have decided that China is the new golden country and the time for the U.S. to need cutting edge technology is over. The facts are all in evidence including this from your post here:

“This represents a gain of only 0.4 mbps over last year’s median download speed.”

So-called High Speed access in the U.S. is a joke. If you live beyond the reach of cable or DSL – and even those often limit speed. Your best bet is to find an independent point-to-point wireless ISP aka a WISP. Links to do that are in my post linked to this comment. If there isn’t one get some people together and get an existing wireless ISP to expand to your area.

This issue affects another kind of wireless: that sold by cell phone companies. BEFORE you decide to switch be sure the limits aren’t too limiting and it gets reception where you plan to use it. There is an excellent company in that post that can assist you in the best equipment and service provider in your specific area.

Something else you need to know: satellite and cell ISP contracts can be extremely difficult to get out of even when THEY break them by not providing the service you are paying for. I am still paying $70+ a month for that almost worthless HughesNet connection (I use it for backup and to monitor Social Network accounts) and will be for a long time.

It costs almost twice what my WISP charges for a connection that is almost at 6 meg download now. (The WISP did not have service in this area when I first needed high speed.) The new Canopy equipment they use can hit towers over 10 miles away. (In rural areas they put the equipment on water towers; in cities on tall buildings or nearby hills/mountains).

I HIGHLY recommend a good wireless company over any other available choice. DO read their reviews as wireless equipment is prone to damage during lightening storms and some companies are much better at restoring service than others.

As for true improvements we are not likely to see those because those who control what happens do not care what we want.

Of course, most areas of Netherlands are densely populated, which lowers infrastructure costs.

I find the raw speed far more useful than the ability to use my line 24/7. Typical uses for me include pulling source code from a VCS, then working on it, or browsing the web. In the first case, time spent waiting for the pull to complete is wasted time; in the second case, I’d rather pull in a big page (e.g. planet.debian.org) quickly, and not have to wait for it to load progressively.

Back to the question, I have 8/1 and could probably get 24/1 if I upgraded my modem, but there’s no point since my quota would be the same. So beyond a certain point (which I’d say is somewhere between 2-4mbps) speed becomes less important. Obviously once you get towards 100mbps there are things you can do with that speed that just aren’t feasible at lower speeds, but basically no-one has residential access close to that at the moment.

If an ISP actually has the capacity in their network to offer all their customers the speeds they advertise, they wouldn’t need to place caps, and they most certainly wouldn’t need to rate limit 10 hours a day *cough*BELLCANADA*cough*. Caps and rate limiting are always definitive proof that a given ISP can’t deliver on the speed it promises, and either they’re incompetent, or they care more about mantaining their obscene profits than they care about satisfying their customers. Basically what these ISPs are doing is exploiting the limited knowledge of their customers on subjects like megabits and gigabytes.

I recently cancelled my 7Mbit/1Mbit line from Bell in favour of a 5Mbit/800Kbit line with no limits from a smaller ISP, all because I’m so fed up with these deceptive telecoms conglomerates and their asinine, anti-customer policies. My new ISP has 2 plans, both with the same speed. The unlimited is $40/mo and the other has as 200GB/mo cap for $30/mo, which is at least in line with the monthly capacity of the upload stream. I really loved having a megabit of upload capacity(I wanted more though!), so much that I’m a little sad that I’ll soon have less – but I was sadder supporting a company that was quite happy to lie to me, alter contract terms and implement these horrendous policies.

250GB/mo isn’t the same kind of slap in the face that the 60GB/mo the major Canadian ISPs offer their customers(at least in my area), but if Comcast is offering lines of 20Mbit/s down and more than 1Mbit/s up, then it’s certainly awful close to one.

Well, both is better. In France, none of the major ISPs sets limits on used bandwidth. The lucky ones who are getting 100 Mbits fiber access pay the same price (30 to 50 € per month), without a limit either. AFAIK the same holds for Japan, where fiber is the rule.