To speak for the quality of internet here, my DSL syncs at about 5800/600 kbps on a good day (rain will drop that and enough of it will throw sync loss issues in to the mix also). I live 5km from the CBD of Brisbane, a city with a greater population of ~2 million.
Here is a list of things I have directly experienced that are affected by my internet connection, which result in me not using services and products that I otherwise would (or would more so):
- Streaming 720p is possible if nothing else uses the connection but anything higher is laughably impossible. To this end, I don't have Netflix or any equivalents.
- Online backups are simply impossible at any significant scale because 70KB/sec is simply too slow. That rules out Crashplan, etc. Even icloud sync, photo stream etc. is a pain because it happening at the wrong time just destroys any other internet usage (see point 1).
- Similar to the above, uploading anything is painful. From a storage/upload point of view, I don't use Flickr. I don't use YouTube. It's just not a reasonable experience.
- Games are becoming a literal multi-day download affair if digitally distributed (if not, I'm paying the Australia Tax). 24 hours of absolute 100% download usage = 49.5GB. I stick to a small subset of games and only grab new ones very infrequently when I can leave my PC on for multiple work days to get through it all. See also my quota, though I could pay more to avoid that.
- Telecommuting using a remote desktop for my work is painful. It's a one-handed number of FPS sort of thing. I just don't even bother unless it's absolutely necessary and then only for the bare minimum to get what I need done before I come in to the office.
That's just off the top of my head with present-day use cases. Who knows what'll come in the next 5 years as I get left behind on the internet.
Here is a list of things I have directly experienced that are affected by my internet connection, which result in me not using services and products that I otherwise would (or would more so):
- Streaming 720p is possible if nothing else uses the connection but anything higher is laughably impossible. To this end, I don't have Netflix or any equivalents.
- Online backups are simply impossible at any significant scale because 70KB/sec is simply too slow. That rules out Crashplan, etc. Even icloud sync, photo stream etc. is a pain because it happening at the wrong time just destroys any other internet usage (see point 1).
- Similar to the above, uploading anything is painful. From a storage/upload point of view, I don't use Flickr. I don't use YouTube. It's just not a reasonable experience.
- Games are becoming a literal multi-day download affair if digitally distributed (if not, I'm paying the Australia Tax). 24 hours of absolute 100% download usage = 49.5GB. I stick to a small subset of games and only grab new ones very infrequently when I can leave my PC on for multiple work days to get through it all. See also my quota, though I could pay more to avoid that.
- Telecommuting using a remote desktop for my work is painful. It's a one-handed number of FPS sort of thing. I just don't even bother unless it's absolutely necessary and then only for the bare minimum to get what I need done before I come in to the office.
That's just off the top of my head with present-day use cases. Who knows what'll come in the next 5 years as I get left behind on the internet.