Submission + - When Is enough bandwidth at home enough? 1
Dubbel writes: In 1993, I was in College and took advantage of a dial up \ SLIP account for internet access from home which my university made available to all students with shell accounts. It was a blazing 14.4Kbps connection. As internet usage increased and I began to get busy signals more often that not, I took advantage of a student discount at a local ISP and got a dial up 33.6 Kbps "Unlimited" PPP service for the princely sum of $40 a month...a significant portion of my net worth at the time. At that point in internet history, online services such as Prodigy and Compuserve were charging by the minute for World Wide Web access which was outside of the content they hosted and this still didn't give you access to the full breadth and depth of what the internet had to offer. I had 1 friend whom I considered to be filthy rich who had a dual channel 128Kbps ISDN line. As soon as broadband became available, I was the first person I new to get it. First it was 1 MBps, then 1.5, then 3 and currently I subscribe to a 6 Mbps DSL service all the while never really exceeding the $40 a month price barrier (now after service bundle discounts and prior to the addition of taxes). Now my ISP is offering their new VDSL internet, TV, & IP telephony service in my area which tops out at a staggering 18 Mbps for around $65 a month which is separate from the bandwidth available for telephony & TV. For the first time ever, I find myself asking....do I really need more bandwidth? Am I ludicrous for asking this question? How many others in the Slashdot community have found their personal broadband saturation point to be beneath fastest service available separate from personal financial constraints?
