The weakest link in the chain

The other thing of course, is having all of this bandwidth does make you think about things to do with it.  Such as online backups, high definition video calls with Skype or FaceTime, online gaming and as much streaming as there is worthwhile content. Worthwhile content will get better with time in the UK, without having to go over a VPN through using Boxee box or Hulu on a PC.

The problem is of course, expectation of performance.

Unless your content provider has a pretty extensive hosting provision in a data centre with big links to ISPs who have their own big links to the major networks and peering points for going cross-border,  you're always going to find the weakest link in the chain sets your real download speed.  So your large content provider download download is always going to be quick and dependent on your line, you may see 1-5mb/s download speeds (using my link as an example)  But more often that not, if your source has a small rack in a co-located data centre and pays meagrely for its traffic out to the net - don't be surprised that a 8meg file download can still take a minute or two.  Big in this case means better.

Of course, it's never this simple.  You also have to trust that your ISP does not run congested links in the first place.  Not always easy to detect, unless you have an ISP who is transparent on how they deliver services in the first place.  Hat tip my my AAISP again (and no, I'm not invested in them in any way).

Having the capacity on tap, is still sort of good though.  In the next year or so, I forsee a big jump in applications across mobiles and tablets which will make use of the larger pipes for high definition rich content.  We'll wonder how we ever lived without it.