Give this posting a quick read.
Will people find a use for (or at least will they pay for) faster internet service? This is the interesting table from that article (copied locally so as not to abuse that bloggers bandwidth: I didn’t make it):
Right now, assuming the average widely-available download speed is 1.5Mbps, people don’t mind sitting around and waiting for a MP3 to download so they can listen to it. Waiting 15 minutes for a 30 minute TV show is about as much time as I’d hang around for semi-immediate gratification. But, today, do people sit in front of their computers for an hour waiting for a 2 hour movie to download? Or almost 4 hours for a DVD image?
No.
That requires kicking off a download now and remembering to come back to view it later. Honestly that’s a bit much to ask for a person who could otherwise just turn on a TV, rent the the DVD, or even drive to the theatre… watch the movie… and come back before the download completes.
But would they wait around 12 minutes for a DVD? Absolutely! It boggles my mind how people can think that excess capacity won’t be used: when there’s already a huge market for entertainment at the quality of a regular movie or DVD. Look at the market for higher megapixel cameras. Driving higher resolutions for games on computers. Big-screen and HDTV TV’s. Digital cable and satellite subscriptions. People will pay to put prettier pictures in front of their eyeballs… and that table shows that people can get higher quality entertainment with near-immediate gratification by paying for quicker internet access.
I pay about $90/month for Internet now. Which sounds like a lot, until you consider that connectivity replaces the costs I’d otherwise pay for news/cableTV (web sites) and phone bills (Skype and webcam). Would I pay for faster access? Possibly: right now Toronto has excellent (for North America) speeds for DSL and cable ISP services… so I wouldn’t pay for extra download capacity. Though I would pay for extra upload capacity.