100 Mbps is Really Nice: How Many Really Need It?

Aside from the general observation that marketing bragging rights are a key reason for touting really-fast broadband connections, one wonders how much real value the typical consumer customer gains.

Cablevision Systems, for example, is on the verge of launching a 101 Mbps (downstream) service costing $99.95 a month. Other service providers have been marketing 50-Mbps services (downstream).

But one wonders how much traction such services will get in the consumer space. To be sure, a 101-Mbps access connection better matches common in-home or on-premises bandwidth supported by Wi-Fi routers.

But it remains unclear how much incremental value the additional bandwidth provides, as many factors affect perceived performance. It won't help to have a really-fast access connection if the servers holding the content one wants to access are not capable of spewing out bits equally fast, if the backbone networks are congested or if there are end user device limitations.

A single user on such a connection (50 Mbps to 100 Mbps) might not have an experience any different from a user with a 10 Mbps or 20 Mbps connection.

To be sure, one can note that bandwidth requirements keep growing. The change from text to graphics generated a one to two order of magnitude increase in bandwidth requirements, for example. A text screen is typically 400 bytes, while a graphic screen can be 50 Kbytes to 100Kbytes, an increase of 10-100 times.

Similar changes can be noted for streaming audio or video. So bandwidth requirements will increase over time. The issue is how much, and for whom.

Locations with many users to support--businesses and large families--will have higher requirements.  In some cases, a family might benefit from having that much bandwidth if multiple users, working simultaneously, frequently are downloading or streaming high-quality video, for example.

Still, one fact is incontestable: the larger the degree of sharing, the more efficient the multiplexing becomes. The ability to share bandwidth becomes more efficient as more users are sharing any single link. So the increased demand will not be linear.

A typical single user, on a single link, might not require so much. By the same token, it isn't clear how much bandwidth a single user, on a single link, actually benefits from really-fast connections, beyond a certain point, as other variables also condition and limit the experience.

That isn't to say access bandwidth requirements are not growing, or to argue those requirements will stop growing. Having the opportunity to buy faster connections is valuable for some end users, particularly those with multiple users in a single household. It is much less clear how much additional utility is gained by the typical single user.